A Book of Memories

The Beauty of My Anomalous Nature

The last place I lived in in Berlin was at the Kühnerts', out in Schöneweide, on the second floor of a villa covered in wild vines.

The leaves of the creeping vines were already turning red and birds were pecking at the blackened berries; autumn had arrived.

No wonder this is all coming back to me now: three years have passed, three autumns, and I know I'll never go back to Berlin, there'd be no reason, no one to go to; that's also why I write that it was the last place I lived in in Berlin, I just know it was.

I wanted it to be the last, and it worked out, just happened, that way regardless of my wishes, no matter; and now, nursing an unpleasant head cold I console myself — my mind being useless for anything else, though even in its rheumy state hovering around essential things — by recalling the autumns of Berlin.

Not that any of it could ever be forgotten.

That second-floor apartment, for instance, on Steffelbauerstrasse.

Naturally, I've no idea who but I might be interested in any of this.

Certainly I don't want to write a travel journal; I can describe only what is mine, let's say the story of my loves, but maybe not even that, since I don't think I could ever begin to talk about the larger significance of mere personal experiences, and since I don't believe or, more precisely, don't know, whether there is anything more significant than these otherwise trivial and uninteresting personal experiences (I assume there can't be), I'm ready to compromise: let this writing be a kind of recollection or reminder, something bound up with the pain and pleasure of reminiscence, something one is supposed to write in old age, a foretaste of what I may feel forty years from now, if I live to be seventy-three and can still reminisce.

My cold throws everything into sharp relief; it would be a shame to miss this opportunity.

For example, I could mention that it was Thea Sandstuhl who took me to the Kühnerts' on Steffelbauerstrasse, in the southern district of Berlin known as Schöneweide, "pretty pasture," which can be reached in thirty minutes from Alexanderplatz in the heart of the city, or, if one misses the always punctual connections and must wait in the rain, forty minutes to an hour.

Thea was the one who arranged or, more precisely, finagled this room for me, and naturally she, too, came to mind during these last cold-filled days, but strangely enough not with those conspicuous devices she used to draw attention to herself — her red sweater and soft red coat, the enormous amount of red she wore, nor the wrinkles on her girlish face, those pale quivering furrows she did not exactly try to cover up, yet one could sense she loathed by the stiff way she held her neck — somehow she always thrust her neck forward as if to say, Go ahead, look, this is my face, this is how old and ugly I've become, even though I, too, was once young and pretty, go ahead, have a good laugh; of course no one even thought of laughing, since she wasn't at all ugly, even if one guessed that it might have been her hangup about the wrinkles that gave rise to her unfortunate love affair — but none of that came to mind just now, or the way she used to sit in her red armchair in her room with the muslin curtains and red carpet; what came to mind was her crying and laughing, her big horse teeth yellowed by nicotine — not her stage cry and laughter, which hardly resembled genuine tears or laughter — and I could see her naughtiness when her eyes narrowed with scorn and her dry skin tautened over her jaw, also the tree in the courtyard of the synagogue on Rykestrasse, that withered acacia somehow connected to her, the sign nailed to its trunk saying it was forbidden to climb the tree, but who would want to climb a tree in the courtyard of an old East Berlin synagogue on a Friday night, nearly thirty years after the war? who would have the slightest inclination to do that? and as the long shadows of Jews streamed out of the lighted synagogue into the golden glow of the courtyard, I told her I had a fever, and with a motherly gesture she flattened her hand on my forehead, but I saw in her face, and my face felt it, too, that she was less interested in checking my temperature than in enjoying my skin, still young and wrinkle-free.

Hence the immediate and perhaps unreasonable apology that what is to follow cannot and should not be a travelogue, that Arno Sandstuhl, Thea's husband, who is some kind of travel writer, should not be compared to me or me to him: I realize of course that my open contempt for him, which may be attributable to jealousy, is not about his innocent passion for visiting faraway places and writing down his experiences, though this definitely aroused my suspicion, since very few people are permitted to travel from here and most of them know the satisfying feeling of travel only from hearsay, yet he, the privileged writer, had even been to Tibet and Africa if I remember correctly; I think my unjustifiable dislike for Arno was set off not by fleeting suspicion or contempt, not even by jealousy, but rather by the odd manner in which Thea had alluded, unwittingly of course, to a secret period of my life.

The first time we visited them, it was in their home, which was in yet another part of town, rather far away, somewhere around Lichtenberg, I believe, but I can't say for sure, because whenever we drove together I relied entirely on Melchior's knowledge of places, and from the moment I'd met him I looked at nothing but his face, absorbed his face in my face, and I couldn't be expected to pay attention to trifles such as where we were going; he looked at the road and I looked at him, that's how we traveled; and the last time I met Thea it was on the S-Bahn after Melchior had already disappeared from Berlin, and Thea was alone, too, because Arno had moved out of her place — we ran into each other at the Friedrichstrasse station, a few minutes before midnight, and she said, "My car's on the blink again," almost apologetically — I was coming from the theater and sat with her till we got to the Ostkreuz, where I had to change for Schöneweide (I was still living with the Kühnerts then), and she stayed on the train, continuing home, and from that I gathered she must have lived somewhere in the vicinity of Lichtenberg, where that Sunday afternoon when we first visited them I had had a talk with Arno that was very much like a conversation between two writers: cautious, serious, boring.

Actually, we had Thea's dubious little ploy to thank for that, for she was the one who made the encounter so stiff and formal: as soon as Arno entered the room, a bit late, and I rose to greet him, she took both our elbows and effectively prevented us from shaking hands, as if to indicate that only through her could we make contact, though we might also have something in common, independent of the connection she offered us— "Two writers in the throes of creative crisis," she said, alluding to one of my earlier remarks I had shared with her in confidence — which obviously she thought was more important than the thwarted handshake, since her words shamelessly betrayed Arno's torment to me, and mine to him; but it was Arno she had hoped to help with this double betrayal, helping him through me by using me to make the three of us totally interdependent, yet lumping Arno and me together in a separate unit; anyway, we did not look into each other's eyes, because one does not like to be seen through so completely — even by someone with the best of intentions — or be shown a likeness one does not or wishes not to resemble.

The situation was all too familiar to me, but of course the two of them couldn't be blamed for that.

Melchior was also laughing behind our backs — the spectacle of two bumbling writers must have seemed quite funny to him — and it was at that moment that I thought, in my discomfiture or perhaps out of spite, that Arno was allowed to roam the world because he was a military agent on the side, an informer, a spy, but it's entirely possible, I thought then, that he might just think it's all right, quite all right for me to believe that about him, since he knew something about me I would have preferred to keep secret: he had noticed that Melchior made no effort to control his glances in front of Thea, so what we had meant to keep secret, namely, that Melchior and I were not just good friends but lovers, was surely not hidden from Arno, either.

On top of that, I had to show the man some respect, partly because he was a good deal older than I, around fifty or so, and partly because I had no idea just what sort of things he wrote; all I knew was that they were travel books, published in editions of hundreds of thousands of copies, and for all I knew they may have been masterpieces, but in any event, I felt it would be wisest to couch my caution in respectful courtesy; this mutually considerate conversation, carried on while Thea, like some office girl on her day off, was setting the table for tea and listening to Melchior buzzing into her ear about me, made both of us feel awkward.

Arno did everything to do justice to the role assigned to him, and I sensed a kind of masculine charm in his questions about the nature of my drama studies and the kind of short stories I wrote, a charm born of male strength in a state of embarrassment; in fact, one of his remarks seemed gallantly designed to offer me a way out, suggesting that he did not wish to dig too deep, "just briefly, of course, it would be impossible otherwise; I'm not thinking in terms of content, only a hint," he said, and smiled, but the fine little lines running toward his mouth made plain that his more profound thinking rarely found release in a smile; he seemed more of a brooder, which is why he didn't look you straight in the eye right away, as if he were hiding something or had something to be ashamed of.

But as I was answering him he did suddenly look into my eyes, and although his interest settled not on what I was saying, it was a genuine look, and I should have appreciated it, because whenever a glance seeks what lies beyond our words — as in this case, for example, it sought to discover the relationship between my writing and the fact that, being a man, I was in love with another man, and I believe this was going through his mind as I spoke — when, in short, attention abandons the strands of meaning in the subject discussed and tries to grasp something of the speaker's emotional essence, then that moment must be cherished and taken very seriously.

But I knew full well that I had already stood like this once before in some room, facing and being completely at the mercy of another man.

Arno, who had apparently put up with all of Thea's quirks, was now trying with that very glance to get around the burdensome roles she had forced on us; it was impossible not to notice it in his beautiful dark-brown eyes, but I was too preoccupied with my own memories, and paid more attention to what Melchior was whispering about me to Thea than to what I was saying to Arno about my writing, which is why I didn't realize that his glance could have at last freed us both, for he was looking at me with a child's eyes, curious, open, and eager, and with some well-chosen words, or with none at all, we could have turned our conversation into not only a pleasant but also a meaningful one; yet I took no notice of this glance, I did not reciprocate, and having reached the end of my report, I managed to muddle up my own question; wanting to be polite, I settled for what was convenient, simply repeating the question he had addressed to me, and became aware of the rude indifference inherent in this repetition only when I suddenly lost his gaze, as in an odd self-mocking gesture he quickly tapped his temples with both hands, which he then turned palms forward and dropped resignedly.

This waving of the hands signaled no disparagement of his own avocation or work but was, rather, an expression of wonder, of being wounded and embarrassed, a renunciation of ever being understood— "Oh, I'm just a mountain climber," said the gesture, and indeed, it seemed to have come from a hiker being routinely asked what the hike was like and was the weather all right — but what is there ever to say about a hike or the weather?

Arno answered me, of course — after all, he too had had the benefit of a solid middle-class upbringing that teaches you to bridge moments of inattention, confusion, even hate, with innocuous chitchat — and he spoke as native Berliners do in general, producing words as if gargling with mouthwash; but even if I had managed to pay attention to him — Melchior was whispering to Thea about what I had cooked for lunch — even if I had understood what Arno was saying, his body language, his stooping posture told me that it was nothing interesting, mere talk, just keeping the conversation going, and at one point I lost even his voice, partly because I was fuming about Melchior's intimate disclosures and wanted to find a way to get him to stop, shut him up, but also because I realized or thought I realized why this neatly lined face talking at me looked so familiar: it could have been my grandfather's face, if my grandfather had been born a German, a face exuding seriousness, patience, humorless self-respect, a democratic face, if there is such a thing; and so I lost not only the gist of what he was saying but the sound of his voice, and he stood before me like an empty husk; the only thing I could grasp was that he was still wary of me, careful not to say anything that might be interesting, not to embarrass me by saying anything I really ought to listen to, and even before Thea had finished setting the table he gave up on me; I was left standing, leaning against an armchair, rocking back and forth, and Arno, excusing himself, quickly returned to his room.

How nicely these autumn images overlap.

Never more solitary experiences.

Experiences related to my past, but the past is itself but a distant allusion to my insignificant desolation, hovering as rootlessly as any lived moment in what I might call the present: only memories of tastes and smells of a world to which I no longer belong, one I might call my abandoned homeland, which I left to no purpose because nothing bound me to the one I found myself in, either; I was a stranger there, too, and not even Melchior, the only human being I loved, could make me belong; I was lost, I did not exist, my bones and solid flesh turned to jelly; and yet, despite the feeling of being torn from everything and belonging nowhere, I could still perceive myself to be something: a toad pressing heavily against the earth; a slimy-bodied snail unblinkingly observing my own nothingness; what was happening to me was nothing, even if this nothing contained my future and, because of the successive autumns, some of my past as well.

That autumn, in the back room of the flat on Steffelbauerstrasse, where two maple trees, still green and ripe, stood in front of my window, and where sparrows were nesting above the window frame, in the hollow left by a missing brick, there in that room, that autumn, I should have not only sensed but fully understood the nature of this situation, but I kept grasping at straws, hoping for an extraordinary insight meant only for me, for a new situation to arise, something, a change of mood, a tragedy even, that would at last define me within this indefinable nothingness; I kept hoping to find something worth saving, something that would lend meaning to things and save me as well, deliver me from this animal existence, not be something from my past — I was sick and tired of my past, the past was a reminder as unseemly as the aftertaste of a belch— and not anything from my future, either, since I had given up on the future long ago, always reluctant to plan ahead even for a moment; no, I wanted something in the here and now, a revelation, a redemption I was waiting for, I can confess this now, but back then I hadn't yet realized that precise knowledge of nothingness should have sufficed.

Thea gave me a lift to this flat, Frau Kühne was her friend, and I spent a lot of time there by myself.

I might say that I was always by myself; never before had I experienced the solitude of a strange apartment the way I did then — the polished furniture, sunlight breaking through the slits in the drawn curtains, the patterns in the carpet, the shine on the floor, the floorboards' creaks, the heat of the stove anticipating evening, when people of the house came home and turned on the TV.

It was a quiet house, only slightly more elegant than the run-down buildings of Prenzlauerberg, those "gray birds, ancient Berlin back yards," as Melchior wrote in one of his haunting poems, and here, too, were the elaborately carved, dove-gray banisters like those in other places where I lived in Berlin, on Chausseestrasse and Wörther Platz, and the wooden stairs covered with dark linoleum, the disinfectant smell of the floor wax, and the colored stained glass in the windows at every landing, though here only half the panes still had the original intricate floral patterns from the turn of the century, the rest having been replaced by simple hammered glass, keeping the staircase in constant dimness, just like the staircase of the house on Stargarderstrasse where I had stayed the longest and where I had had time to adjust to staircases like this, though not even that house could become mine the way any apartment building in Budapest could have, since its past was missing for me; in various ways this past did signal to me, and I very much wanted to decipher the signals, knowing full well that these games of re-creating the past would not make Melchior more my own; nevertheless, coming home in the afternoon, going up the stairs, I would try to imagine another young man in my place who had come to Berlin one fine day long ago — the man was Melchior's grandfather, and he became the hero of my daily evolving fictional story, because he was the one who could have seen these stained-glass flowers when they were still new and whole, illuminated by light filtering in from the back yard, could have seen the totality of the patterns, if he had ever set foot in this house and while walking up the wooden stairs fully perceived his present, which is the past of my imagination.

Downstairs, in the dark entrance hall, even during the day you had to press a glowing red button that turned on the feeble lights just long enough to get you to the first landing, where a similar button had to be pressed again, but often I walked up the stairs in the dark, because the constantly glowing little button beckoned to me like a beacon in the night seen from the open sea, and I liked looking at the tiny source of light so much that I preferred not to press the button, so the stairwell remained in darkness, and while I did not know exactly how many steps there were, the creaks proved a reliable guide and the red glow helped me on the landings; I hardly ever missed a step.

I used to do the same thing in the house on Wörther Platz where Melchior lived, walking up the stairs almost every night, with good old Frau Hübner on the third floor looking through the peephole while sitting, I was told, on a high stool, but since I walked upstairs in the dark she couldn't see me, could only hear footsteps, and so she'd invariably open the door to peek out either too early or too late.

In the house on Steffelbauerstrasse the hallway lights didn't work properly, staying on only if one kept pushing the button, so if Frau Kühnert happened to be in the kitchen when I was ready to go out for the evening, she'd rush out to make sure I didn't walk downstairs in the dark; I tried hard to leave without being noticed, since I knew that Frau Kühnert faithfully reported my every move to Thea, who was anxious to know everything about Melchior, and after a while I imagined that even Frau Hübner was working for Thea and Frau Kühnert, but I almost never managed to move quietly enough for my landlady: "Hold it, my dear sir, I'm here to light your way," she'd say, and run out of the kitchen to hold her finger on the button until I reached the ground floor; "Thanks," I'd shout back, thinking that Frau Hübner must be waiting in her third-floor apartment, half-expecting me politely to say hello as I passed in the light emanating from her place; but if I happened to come home during the night and there was no light filtering in from the street, I had to feel out each step on my way up or use a match, because in this house on Steffelbauerstrasse even the tiny red filament of the button had burned out and could not guide me, and I was afraid of bumping into something live on the staircase.

Melchior had never been in this house.

Come to think of it, he never set foot in the house on Stargarderstrasse either; we were forever hiding or, more precisely, we were trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, which was something I was quite adept at, it came easily to me, a sort of behavior that also alluded, unpleasantly, to my past: once, on a Sunday afternoon in front of the building, when Stargarderstrasse was all but deserted, though anyone could have concealed himself behind drawn curtains, on a dull-gray November afternoon when everyone was sitting at home watching TV, drinking coffee, and we both felt we could not say goodbye, we didn't really have to, we could have stayed with each other, except that we'd been together for three days and our protective shell which kept everything and everyone out was getting thicker and thicker and we had to break out of it, we had to part, spend at least one night alone — I wanted to take a bath, and Melchior's flat had no bathroom, you had to use a washbowl or the kitchen sink, I felt dirty, wanted to be alone for the afternoon and evening at least, catch my breath, and then, before midnight, run downstairs and call him from a public phone, hear his voice while leaning against the cold glass of the booth, and perhaps go back to his place — and we agreed that he would walk me to the corner of Dimitroffstrasse, and then he'd buy cigarettes at the tobacco shop under the elevated that stayed open on Sunday, but we couldn't tear ourselves away from each other; first he said he'd walk me only one more block, then I asked him to walk another; we couldn't just shake hands, it would have been ridiculous, awkward, and cowardly, but we had to do something; we avoided looking at each other, and then he held out his hand, if only because we wanted to touch some part of each other, and so we kept holding hands; there was no one on the street, but this was not enough, it was his mouth that I wanted, there, in front of the house, that Sunday afternoon.

And the house on Chausseestrasse he also saw only from the outside.

It was a Sunday evening.

I pointed out the window from the streetcar taking us to the theater; on the empty platform he was telling me about the Berlin uprising, and I told him about the revolt in Budapest, our sentences dovetailing smoothly into one another.

He looked up at the window, but I could not tell whether he actually saw it; he kept on talking: to me it was very important then that he should at least know the house, if not the room, where I had first stayed and which, without his being aware of it, had become important in his life, too; but Melchior, though not indifferent to my past, distanced himself from it, he could not do otherwise.

I had been living in the flat on Steffelbauerstrasse for almost two months, was used to it, had even grown to like it, when one morning Frau Kühnert, lighting the fire in the stove, told me that electricians were coming that morning to fix the lights in the staircase, they'd be looking for her, but she couldn't stay home, and I'd be there anyway, wouldn't I?…"Yes, of course," I replied, still lying in bed while Frau Kühnert knelt in front of the stove and, as she always did when working around the house, quietly hummed to herself; she was right, I spent most of my time at home, except for evenings, and since she was in charge of things concerning the building, she said, the electricians had to see her first, but I should tell them she couldn't stay home, "Who do they think they are, anyway?" and I should explain what the problem was, and whatever happened not let them leave, "the swine," until they fixed the lights.

I stayed home the whole morning, waiting for Melchior to call — we had only a few more days left — but he didn't call, and the repairmen didn't show up either.

If only he had called during that cloudless day of sunshine and complete silence; in the morning the Kühnerts heated only the living room and my room, and the nights were cold, occasionally there was even frost on the ground; from the dining room, which opened from the foyer, one could walk into the living room, but my room was at the far end of the apartment, approached like two small bedrooms from a long dark corridor connecting the kitchen and the bathroom; save for the living room and my own room, I left all the doors open to make sure I could run quickly to the phone if it rang, and if Melchior had called, I would have suggested we go to the Müggelsee if I could have talked to him from the Kühnerts' living room; the weather was perfect, I would have said, looking from the warm room into the cold sunlight, but I would have also told him that I wouldn't go with him to his mother's, because the only reason he wanted me along was to make this farewell easier for himself; he had to say goodbye to her, perhaps see her for the last time, without letting her suspect anything, and I could not imagine that he would never again share with me his boyhood bed in his unheated bedroom; it seemed too implausible that everything we had would now irrevocably come to an end.

"That bed? You really used to sleep in that? and it was standing in the same spot? and that stain on the ceiling, that was there, too?"

He laughed at my questions, as if he couldn't conceive of anything changing in his world or of anyone being surprised at the absence of change; he was right, things were not that changeable there, and his mother, Helene, named after her mother, who had died in childbirth, made certain that things no longer changed, so she could provide her son with the security of an ultimate haven, but aside from this home situation, Melchior had good reason to feel like that about changes: before he had met me, he told me, not without a small show of male pride, it had mattered very little whom he was with, he simply had no need to feel secure, was not very choosy; in fact, the most casual relationships were those that had often given him the greatest pleasure; and to have something assuredly constant in his desultory existence, he had rigorously developed his taste, honing and refining it, making it ascetically austere; in his inaccessibly hermetic poetry he had forced himself to be self-effacing and uncompromising; and no matter what happened, he could come back here to his mother's house every weekend, which he did, lugging his dirty laundry in a suitcase, because here everything stayed the same and his mother insisted on doing his laundry, nothing had changed "except for the stain, that got there later," and he laughed, but his laugh never meant very much; he laughed easily, lightheartedly, for no particular reason, and nothing could ever extinguish the cheer in his eyes, except when he thought no one was looking.

I couldn't imagine that come Sunday morning, when waking to the peal of church bells booming through the tiny windows of his mother's house, I'd be alone, no longer able to inhale in the cold room the fragrance of his skin mingled with the pungent scent of winter apples and the sweet smell of pastry baked to be eaten with freshly brewed Sunday coffee, the apples laid out in neat rows atop the closet, the sugar-coated coffee cake on the marble-topped sideboard waiting as the afternoon snack, and the tiny window always open; yet his face would cloud over and he'd look at my forehead, my mouth, when inadvertently I told him that I loved the smell of his sweat; my nose loved it, my palms, my tongue loved it, and as if my words had pained him, he hugged me; "I can taste and smell and feel you!" he said, emitting an odd sound, and I thought he was laughing, but it was a brief, tearless sob that later, on his creaky bed at Wörther Platz, erupted in whimpering, choking sounds of terror.

I also pictured the path around the Müggelsee, covered with multicolored leaves, and the tranquillity of the mirror-smooth lake itself, and the sound of our footsteps on the fallen leaves muffled by early-morning mist; actually, there was another reason I would have asked that we go to the Müggelsee: I felt that there I might still win him over, or commit myself unconditionally to him for good, but I knew it was impossible — oh, that incredible autumn! — or we could have gone to the zoo, of course, if he thought the stroll around the Müggelsee too troublesome or far away; if one could believe the colored posters on the S-Bahn — looking at them became my pastime while riding the trains — the zoo was also located in a forest, full of secluded shady paths, and we had never been there even though we often planned to go: but I also pictured myself taking a knife from the Kühnerts' kitchen and during our walk stabbing him to death.

In this last of my Berlin residences I used to get up late, or rather, I'd wake up two or three times before actually getting out of bed, sometimes close to noon.

First, it was always the waking with a start at dawn as Dr. Kühnert rattled down the hallway past my door toward the bathroom: I'd pull the pillow over my head so as not to hear what was to follow — his going into the bathroom and first urinating; I had to hear the precise sounds of the short, sharp splashes preceding the long steady stream that stopped abruptly and ended in a gradually weakening trickle, the wall was thin and I could tell he was aiming at the back of the bowl, the hollow that fills up with water even after flushing; as a child I had also tried to do the same, and in a way I found it amazing that someone at the age of fifty, a university professor, should still amuse himself this way — but if the only sounds I heard were a short tap followed by a muffled squirt of urine against the side of the bowl, I knew he was going to defecate, too.

Elimination was not necessarily indicated by breaking wind; farts sounded quite different when done while urinating, standing up, than when seated, in which position the bowl acted as an amplifier; there was no way to confuse the two noises, and the pillow didn't really help, for the groans, the gentle sighs of relief, the scraping and rustling of the toilet paper could be heard clearly through the wall; the pillow could not possibly help, because I was also listening, as it enjoying it all, as it tormenting myself with the knowledge that I couldn't and wouldn't want to close my ears — one can close one's eyes or mouth but ears can be stopped up only with fingers, ears can't close themselves — and Dr. Kühnert was still far from finished, the noisy flushing was only a brief pause, and if I hadn't known what else was still in store, I might have had enough time simply to roll over and fall back asleep, because during these startled awakenings, at night or early in the morning, one is hardly aware of the transition between sleep and wakefulness, and the fading characters in a dream sometimes aren't intimidated even by a suddenly switched-on light; they have faces and hands, and they recede just far enough to be out of reach, jumping on shelves, among the books, and sometimes the very opposite happened: the features of my room dissolved smoothly into a dream, I'd see the window, but it was already a dream window, and the tree in front of it and the hollow left by the missing brick where sparrows nested were also part of the dream, and suddenly my whole body would stiffen, because this was the moment when Dr. Kühnert would stand in front of the mirror, bend over the sink, right over my head, blow his nose into his hand, and, while the water was still running, begin to snort and hawk, spitting forced-up phlegm into the sink, directly at me.

At seven o'clock a knock on my door would wake me again, and "Yes, come in," I'd call out in what sounded like a completely strange voice, a sign that I first wanted to say in Hungarian what in the very next instant I had to say in German, whereupon Frau Kühnert would enter and, humming softly to herself, light the fire in the stove; in the evenings I'd walk to the theater over a soggy carpet of fallen leaves and the soles of my patent-leather shoes would always be soaked through.

But by that time Melchior was gone.

I was left with Berlin, slushy and gray.

After the show I went to the flat on Wörther Platz; it was cold, and the lamp's glare made the purple of the curtain look faded, but I didn't feel like lighting the candles.

It was raining.

The police could arrive any minute and break down the door.

The refrigerator was humming peacefully in the kitchen.

The next day I also left the city.

In Heiligendamm there was bright sunshine, though what happened to me there I still can't explain.

If I treated words lightly, I'd say I felt happy there: the sea, the journey, and the events directly preceding it must have contributed to this feeling, not to mention the pretty little place itself, which they call the "white city on the sea," a slight exaggeration, since the whole place consists of only a dozen or so two-story cottages facing the sea, on either side of the attractive spa, but white it was — the shutters, now closed, the benches on the smooth green lawn, the colonnade, the summer musicians' chairs stacked in neat piles, and the houses themselves surrounded by manicured deep-green shrubs and tall black pines — the most attractive feature of the place may have been its deceptively fair weather, and the silence.

Deceptive I say, because the wind howled here, and the embankment deflected enormous waves, crushed and cleaved them asunder, massive steel-blue waves booming thunderously into white foam; and silence I say, for between two booms one's sense of hearing fell into the trough of the waves, into a rapt anticipation, redeemed by the sounds of force turning into weight, though in the evening, when I set out for a walk, everything had calmed down, a full moon shone low over the open sea.

I began walking on the embankment toward Nienhagen, a neighboring town, with the rumbling sea and its glimmering crests on one side, silent marshland on the other, and I, the only living soul in the midst of the elements; I had run out of cigarettes earlier in the afternoon, and since Nienhagen, a town protected from the western winds by something called Gespensterwald, or Forest of Ghosts, did not seem that far away — I'd used a broken matchstick to measure the distance on the map and was sure I could reach it, because my eyes, though occasionally blinded by the wind, could pick out the flashes of its light tower — I planned to buy cigarettes there, maybe even have a cup of hot tea before returning; I pictured a friendly tavern with fishermen sitting around a table by candlelight and myself, not one of them, walking in; imagined their faces turning toward me, saw my own face looking at them.

I could see myself, clearly, transparently, walking in front of me; stepping lightly yet gravely, I followed behind.

It was as if not I but my body was unable to endure the pain caused by our separation.

The wind got under my loose-fitting coat, pushing, shoving me forward, and although I had put on all my warm clothes I was cold now, without actually feeling cold, and that frightened me, because even if the usually merciful sensory delusion wasn't functioning perfectly, I knew that I ought to feel cold; at another time I might have turned back, let fear win out, and find no difficulty in explaining away my retreat by saying it was too nasty out, and catching a bad cold would have been too high a price to pay for such a nocturnal outing; but this time I could not delude myself, as if something had splintered the image we so painstakingly create of ourselves and wish to see accepted by others, until this distorted image seems real even to us; there was no room for deception: I was this person walking on the embankment, and though all my familiar conditioned responses were functioning, there was something amiss, a gap, more than one gap, distortions, cracks through which it was possible to glance at a strange creature, another someone.

Someone who long ago, yet on this very day, arrived in Heiligendamm and in the evening started out for Nienhagen.

As if what was about to happen took place fifty, seventy, a hundred years ago.

And this was so, even if nothing was about to happen.

It was a new, exciting sensation, rather unsettling, to experience my own disintegration, yet I accepted it with the serenity of a mature person, as if I were fifty, seventy, or a hundred years older, an affable elderly gentleman recalling his youth, but there was really nothing extraordinary or mystical about this, and though I couldn't imagine a more poetic setting for my death neither could I muster the courage to take the sleeping pills I had been carrying with me for years in a little round box; still, just to do something, I again called on my imagination to separate my two selves, liberating myself from my hopelessly muddled emotions, and saw that the future of my strange self was nothing more than the past and present of my familiar self, everything that had already or would still come to pass.

The situation was exceptional only in that I could not identify with either one of my selves, and in this overexcited state I felt like an actor moving about on a romantic stage set, my past being only a shallow impersonation of myself, just as my future would be, with all my sufferings, as if everything could be playfully projected into the past or the future, as if none of it had really happened or could still be altered and it was only my imagination that made sense of these entangled fragments from the various dimensions of my life, arranging them around a conventionally definable entity I could call my self, which I could show off as myself but which was really not me.

I am free, I thought to myself then.

I also thought then that out of this boundless freedom my imagination selected, quite haphazardly and not very adroitly, only potentially tiny possibilities from which to assemble a face that others might like and that I could then consider my own.

Today I no longer think this, but then the realization seemed so powerful and profound, I saw with such clarity that other being, the one who had remained free, untouched by any of my potential selves — he walked with me and I with him, he was cold and I feared for him — that I had to stop, but that wasn't enough, I had to kneel down and give thanks for this moment, though my knees did not like to bend in a show of humility, I would have liked to remain neutral as a stone — no, but even that wasn't enough — and I even closed my eyes: nothing, nothing but a tattered rag flapping in the wind!

The moon hung low, it was yellow and seemed only an arm's length away, but on the horizon its reflection grew pale, too feeble to outline the tremulous crests of the waves; the water seemed perfectly smooth but that, too, was an illusion, I thought to myself, the illusion of distance, just as on the other side of the embankment, in the marsh, where the light had no focus, there was no surface or edge in which it could be reflected and so the light ceased, vanished, and because the straining eye could find nothing to fix on, there was no darkness or blackness there, nothing but nothingness itself.

I had arrived in Heiligendamm in the late afternoon, just before sunset, and I set out for Nienhagen after dark, when the moon was already up.

I couldn't tell what was out there, the map indicated marshland, the guidebook mentioned a swamp, and whatever it was, it lay deep.

And silent.

As if the wind had halted and turned back over the embankment, stopped blowing there.

Was it covered with reeds or sedge, or, disguising itself as plain soil, did plain grass grow over it?

There was a time when the possibility of seeing ghosts gave me a thrill; now the thought that only nothingness was out there seemed far more terrifying.

Back then, years earlier — and much as I'd like to avoid it I shall speak about this at greater length later — if a shadow, a movement, or a noise unexpectedly materialized in something palpable and called me by name from behind my back, spoke to me or seemed to be listening to me, I knew it to be the very embodiment of my fears; now, whatever this was, it just lay over that moor, made no movement, emitted no sound, cast no shadow.

It merely kept watch.

Hung there over the marsh, an empty shell, an alien thing watching scornfully whoever strayed this way, and this scorn was disconcerting.

I wouldn't say it was frightening, more like chastening; its power lay in reining in my overwrought imagination, which wanted to gallop freely and invent its own story; it scorned all such ambition and gave me to understand that it was responsible for confounding my sense of time; it created the gaps through which I could peer into my soul, and in return for the playful doubling of my self, all it asked me was that I not forget it, which meant that I should not believe my own self-serving stories; and if I had neither the courage nor the good sense to do away with myself, I should at least be aware of as of a pain, and know that it was here, outside me but able any time to reach inside and touch my so-called vital organs, of which — no matter how cleverly I try to manipulate things, to become independent of it—I had no more than one or two; my existence could not be replaced by my imagination; I should not be too sure of myself, should not delude myself that a setting such as this, a moonlit night by the sea, could make me free, let alone happy.

I was standing up by then, and like one who has just completed his compulsory daily devotion, I reached down and with an involuntary movement dusted off my pants.

Much as I would have liked to excuse this little movement as a telltale sign of instilled orderliness, it made me feel again just how ridiculous I was, how fraudulent, and I quickly turned around and wondered if it might not be a good idea to go back, since after all, I could buy cigarettes in the restaurant, where I had had a pleasant meal earlier on, sitting in a comfortably furnished room set off by a glass door; I could even get a cup of tea there, the place stayed open until ten; the wind kept howling, and I would have loved to howl along with it and throw myself on the rocks, but by now I had got quite far from Heiligendamm, I hadn't even noticed how far, and seemed to be on higher ground, too, because somewhere below, on the line dividing land and water, the twinkling of a few tiny stars suggested the presence of houses, and I would have been at least as ashamed of taking flight as I was disturbed by the vacuous stare of the marsh at my back.

I thought about how to continue.

I could not walk without part of my body, mostly my back, coming into contact with it, but what if I turned down to the beach?

When this idea occurred to me — quite uselessly, since by now I could clearly see the surf exploding in the yellow moonlight, pounding away at the foot of the embankment, and one part of my splintered self found it amusing that the other was seeking shelter at the embankment, hoping to avoid what inevitably he would have to accept — when this idea occurred, it was accompanied by a figure, not a ghost, but a simple notion of a young man walking through the glass door of that pleasant restaurant; he looked around, our eyes met, and the room was flooded with sunshine.

I made myself turn around once more and continued toward Nienhagen.

This is getting to be quite amusing, I thought to myself.

For there I was — and at the same time I imagined myself not there— and walking with me was this elderly gentleman whom I would one day become, and he brought along his own youth; the elderly gentleman at the seaside, reminiscing about his youth, perfectly suited my own purposes, now transformed into strictly literary ones, and so did that room with its comfortable chairs, the white damask tablecloth, the coffee cup he had just raised to his lips; and the young man who joined us, with his hand on the back of a chair bidding a courteous good morning to the group breakfasting at the table; to get a better look at him, for he was the one I was most interested in, I could send him back to the door where he had first appeared, because I felt that he was completely mine, since he did not exist; and there was someone else besides us, the one who was watching and who let me have this blond youth in exchange for allowing myself to become a helpless instrument of his power.

This had to be the moment when I finally concluded the silent pact that had been in preparation for years: for if today, much sadder and wiser, in full knowledge of all the consequences, I imagine the impossible and ponder what would have happened if, giving in to my fears, I had turned back and not pushed on toward Nienhagen, and like any sensible mortal in similar circumstances had taken cover in my boringly ordinary hotel room, then most probably my story would have remained within the bounds of the conventional, and those twists and deviations that have marked my life thus far would have indicated only which path not to follow, and with a good dose of sober and wholesome revulsion, I might have stifled the pleasure afforded by the beauty of my anomalous nature.

Our Afternoon Walk of Long Ago

When I had arrived in Heiligendamm late in the afternoon of the day before, I'd been too tired to change and take part in the communal meal; I had my supper brought to my room, and putting off introducing myself until the morning, I retired early.

But I had trouble falling asleep.

It was as if I were curled up inside a large, dark, warm, soft cocoon besieged on all sides by the sea, and though I felt protected, water swept over the cocoon whenever I was about to unwind into my own softness, just above my head, the foam hitting me below the eyes.

The building was silent.

I thought I heard the wind blow, but the spiky crowns of the pine trees barely moved.

I closed my eyes and pressed my lids tight so as not to see at all, but when I didn't, I was there again, lying inside that dim cocoon where it would have been completely dark but for the images forming and dissolving before me, images of myself that would not let me rest, showing me scenes of myself that I thought I had forgotten because I had wanted to forget: on the bed where I lie now my father was sleeping, on his back, though I knew he slept not on this bed but on the narrow sofa in the living room; his shoes on the floor looked so forlorn without his feet; he spread his huge thighs shamelessly, and he was snoring; through the slats of the drawn shutters, sunlight fell into the room in stripes, intersecting those of the parquet floor, and in the depth of my sleep I felt my body convulse at the sight, I could not bear to look on, I wanted air and light; Father's breathing body made the past seem too near, too painfully present — but then I sank into darkness again and saw myself suddenly appear in the halo of a gas lamp, and then disappear again, and I was walking toward myself on a familiar wet street that may have been Schönhauser Allee, deserted on the night before my departure, a little after midnight, on my way home from my old friend Natalya Kasatkina; but on the corner of Senefelder Platz in front of the public lavatory I stopped to wait for myself, and while my footsteps were clattering toward me, the unlighted little structure at the center of the bare bushes on the square seemed to be making noises, as if panting, the wind was battering at its door, opening and closing it to the rhythm of my own breathing, and when it was open, I could see inside: a tall man was standing, facing the wall shining with tar, and when I finally got there he grinned at me and offered me a rose.

A purplish-blue rose.

But I didn't want to touch it, somehow I had to dismiss this image, too; how lovely it would be, I thought, to come to rest in some calm, luminous space — and then, quite gently, my bride floated into my cocoon. The moment she whipped off her hat and veil (rather roughly, I thought) and her massive red tresses fell to her shoulders, she breathed with bestial eagerness into my face, but instead of'the aroma of her breath, I got a whiff of something unpleasant, foul almost.

Somewhere nearby a door was slammed shut.

I sat up in bed, awake and maybe a little alarmed.

The bedroom door was open, and I could see the bluish shine of the white furniture in the living room.

And there was no window through which to see the crowns of the pine trees, the curtains were drawn, there was no sound of wind, only the murmur of the sea coming from afar, because my room faced the park.

It was as if the door of the public lavatory that slammed shut became, in my wakeful state, the final chord of a dream that had just ended.

But I heard hurried, retreating footsteps out in the corridor, and in the adjacent room someone cried out, or screamed, sounding much too loud— or the walls were too thin — and then came a heavy thud, as if a large object or a body had fallen on the floor.

I listened for more, but heard nothing.

I was too frightened to move; the creaking of the bed, the swishing of the sheets might have obliterated the moment, a careless rustle made by moving the eiderdown might have covered up the noise of murder — but what followed was silence.

And I couldn't be sure I wasn't dreaming all of this, because we often dream of waking up, but it's not a real awakening, only a new phase of sleep, a slide downward, a descent to greater depths; and it's also true that the cry, the scream, and the thud of the falling body sounded familiar, reminding me again of Father; my eyes were open, I could still see him writhe in his sleep, start up, and then fall from the sofa onto the light-streaked floor; at the time, twenty years ago, he took his afternoon naps on the sofa that at night was my bed, and in those days we rented the very same place from which these peculiar noises were now coming, so it was quite possible that I wasn't actually experiencing these things but dreaming them anew, which was all the more likely, because the event that had put an end once and for all to the beautiful days at Heiligendamm had come to mind again just before I went to bed, as I was closing the terrace door.

Back then, on warm nights we would leave not only all the windows but the terrace door wide open, which made me especially glad, because it meant that shortly after my parents had finally closed their bedroom door, I could carefully get out of bed and, pretending to have overcome all my fears, steal out onto the terrace.

At times like that the terrace seemed menacingly empty, wide, enormous, reaching far into the park; on moonlit nights it was like a sharp wedge between the trees, on moonless nights it blended in more softly, almost as if it were afloat among the gently swimming shadows of the pointed pines, and if I kept watching this, this and nothing else, it would seem as if I were not here at all but aboard a ship quietly plowing the waves; but before stepping out on the terrace I always had to make sure I'd be alone, for it happened once that I hadn't noticed the lady who was our next-door neighbor standing in a corner of the terrace leaning on the balustrade, looking alternately like an apparition or a shadow depending on the moon, and if she was there I couldn't go out, for while we did have a secret nighttime understanding that never dared to test the light of day, I was afraid she might report me to my parents, and though her closeness at times felt wonderful and in a way I even longed for it, the nocturnal escapes were truly pleasurable only if I could be alone and picture the ship sailing away with me.

The first time I ventured out carelessly, in my stunned surprise I was rooted to a spot in the middle of the terrace, for she was there; the moon was out, thin and feeble behind a motionless cloud, and she was standing in the densely blue, glimmering night, her face turned toward the moon, and I believed her to be a ghost, a creature about whose peculiar nature I had been instructed by Hilde, our maid, who told me that ghosts had to be beautiful, "stunningly, stunningly beautiful"; and indeed, the sheer, flowing robe covering her graceful body, the silvery sheen of her waist-length hair seemed to bear this out; she was beautiful as she stood there— firm, yet also as if her feet were hardly touching the ground, as if her eyes were open but her eyeballs were missing from their sockets; when the cool night breeze touched my face I knew it was her breath, an exhalation that would be followed by an inhalation, and then with her next breath she would suck me in, draw me into her hollow body, and carry me off.

It wasn't fear that made me immobile or, if it was, it had to be fear of such a high degree that the senses are transported into the dimension of rapture, fear of such intensity that the body seems to break free of itself; I had no feeling in my hands or feet, thus had no means to move, yet without having to think about it I was aware of my entire life, all ten years of it, which I now would have to part with to slip into another form; only much later, when in love, did I experience anything resembling this feeling, but still, this extraordinary state of being seemed natural then, not only because Hilde's tale had warned me about its coming but because I myself had wished for it.

Of course, this mixture of sublime dread and vehement longing could last but for an instant; I realized quickly that it had been only an illusion, no matter how real it felt; "Why, this is Fräulein Wohlgast, our neighbor," and Fräulein Wohlgast, whose name came up often during our evening walks, was someone I myself frequently observed conversing with Mother at mealtimes; besides, this ghost business had begun to sound a little suspicious, even to me, ever since the time I thought I did see some sort of apparition and Father reacted by nodding somberly, almost gravely, but with the sardonic satisfaction of a man blessed with a sense of humor: of course, the ghost was most certainly there, in the sedge, where else would it be, hadn't I said I'd seen it? Father went on to say that he couldn't see a thing and he was straining his eyes to the limit, though now, just this instant, he thought he heard something, no, it was nothing, which didn't mean it wasn't there a moment ago; it was the very nature of ghosts to be here now and there the next minute, that was the way they were, sometimes they became visible, but mostly they stayed invisible; and I might be interested to know that it was also part of their nature not to appear for just anyone but only for very special persons, so I should be flattered and honored; and he, too, was happy that a ghost had favored his son with an appearance, for he, Father, was sorry to acknowledge that he hadn't experienced this sort of infernal pleasure for a long, long time, his ghosts had simply evaporated, vanished, which he regretted no end, and felt the poorer and emptier for it; in fact, he'd almost forgotten about their existence and eerie ways, but to see if there was any resemblance between his past experiences and my present ones, he asked me to describe, as accurately as possible, the outward appearance of my ghost.

That day we took a longer walk than usual, so the appearance of the ghost aside, it was itself out of the ordinary, because on our afternoon walks we never ventured beyond the immediate vicinity of the spa, and this area was no larger than the park itself, beyond which lay untouched landscape, the black-pebbled seashore, the craggy, precipitous rocks, and, in the opposite direction, the marsh, with a murky, opaque pond in the middle of it called the Snail Garden, and even farther, on dry land, the fabulously scarifying beechwood grove called the Great Wilderness.

True, the park, girded by slender whitewashed cottages facing the sea, was quite large and had wide driveways broadening into little plazas and radiating in every direction, with whimsical little footpaths crisscrossing the green lawns, but the solitary pines had more than enough space to display their solitude, just as the white birches with their meticulous nonchalance had room to arrange themselves in tidy clusters; the seafront promenade was also part of the park, protected by a tall stone wall adorned with elongated marble urns and running straight as an arrow, separating land from sea; in a sense, even the short first section of the embankment belonged to the park, too, being a direct extension of the promenade and different from the rest of the embankment because they had used fine gravel instead of crushed stones to make a rough surface suitable for walking — I could actually sink my feet ankle-deep into this gravel — but despite these efforts to turn this short section into a walkway by using soft, pleasantly crunching gravel, it remained bare as it rose between the sea and the marsh, a reminder of its convulsive origins, when in the course of a single night many centuries ago it had been flung here by a terrible tidal wave, thus cutting off water from water and letting a once lovely bay deteriorate into a marsh; properly speaking, then, only the tree-lined lane could be said to belong to the park, but that, too, if only in a mundane sense, led away from here, since it went from the rear entrance of the spa to the railroad station, where it ended for good; from the station there was nowhere to go, one had to turn back, for it was one thing to take a walk and quite another to go on an excursion.

It is also true that my parents never decided in advance which way we would walk, this was always determined by chance or simply by the dearth of choices; it seemed quite unnecessary to ponder which of the two routes to take — whether, coming from the spa, we should turn onto the seaside promenade or proceed farther on the embankment and on the way back, sweeping around the main building, walk as far as the station— or decide whether we should while away the time in the lobby's wicker chairs until so little time was left for the actual walk that on our return, instead of taking the sensible short route, we'd choose the impractical long one; but none of this really mattered; all these afternoon walks did was make us repeat the same diverting game of choices and possibilities, though only until the pearly hue of the sky began to deepen and we, back in our rooms or on the terrace, watched it turn completely dark.

On that day, however, nightfall caught us out-of-doors, for we had begun our afternoon walk, as usual, first going down to the shore for our fresh-air cure, which we took by leaning against the stone wall, no more than fifteen minutes, and simply relaxing our muscles as much as possible and silently inhaling and exhaling through our nostrils, taking advantage of the early evening air that, in Dr. Köhler's view, owing to the temporarily high degree of humidity and the presence of those natural substances the mucous membrane of the nose could experience as some sort of fragrance, was highly effective in clearing the respiratory passages and filling the lungs, stimulating the circulation and soothing one's nerves: as the much-respected doctor liked to emphasize, this worthy goal could be achieved only if the esteemed patients were willing to follow all his instructions and did not casually keep violating the rules, for example, not leaning against walls or trees while breathing, never mind simply sitting around the lobby or the terrace chattering away, and only with a lull in the conversation starting solemnly to wheeze and sigh, and only until one had something urgent to say again; no, such ladies and gentlemen were not even worth talking about, they were doomed, as good as in the morgue already; their thoughtlessness was understandable, but those who wished to extend their sojourn on earth, however slightly, should be able to stand on their own two feet for three five-minute periods, which is the time it took to complete all the repetitions of the breathing exercise, yes, stand up, loosely and without any support; excuses and objections should not even be acknowledged, for beauty and health were inseparable, and for this reason the doctor would be very pleased if he could convince people, especially the ladies, of course, that one's good looks were not in the least threatened but, on the contrary, enhanced, albeit in a more complex manner than with girdles and facials, if in the interest of good health we did not mind contorting our faces a little — anyway, grimacing was necessary only during the first five minutes of the exercise, until all that putrid air left one's lungs — and this was to be done not inside stuffy rooms polluted by tobacco and perfume, for there we only inhale the same foulness we blow out, but right here near the water, even if other people could see us; when it comes to health, there can be no room for false modesty, we must breathe through our noses — without puffing out our chests, though, as Catholics do, so arrogantly haughty in their humility; the air must be directed downward, into the belly — after all, we are Protestants, are we not? — and can safely fill our stomachs with air, if not our heads, because everything should be in its place and in its own good time: gray matter in our heads, air in our bellies, provided we don't tighten our girdles again beyond the reasonable limit, ladies, and provided, too, that we hold in the air, deep down, to the count of ten, and then slowly let out that horrid stench that was in us, yes, in all of us, for to keep it in would be not only unnecessary but downright indecent.

The sun was going down but darkness held off for quite a while, the sun's red reflection lingering in the graying sky; then suddenly the sea turned black, the whitening crests flashed as they rose and tumbled, and the evening mist which would slowly enwrap the park already hung over the water, seagulls were flying ever higher; as we stood there, hearing not only one another's breathing but also the relaxed, crunching footsteps of strollers behind us, I felt I was experiencing the sweetest silence there was: made of the triple rhythm of the seagulls' screeching, the sea's murmuring, crackling, and rumbling sounds, and my own breathing, which I realized I was trying to adjust to this rhythm; this was the silence in which all emotions subside, become motionless, in which state rising thoughts can only ruffle the surface of emotions before falling back, unformed and unformulated, to where they came from, until — prompted by a crunching footfall, a funny wheeze, the seagulls' choral screech and sudden silence, or by some physical sensation, like feeling the evening breeze, the buckling of a knee, perhaps an itch, or by a psychological impression of a fleeting, undirected anxiety, an overwhelming cheerfulness, or a fitful longing — something would be cast up again, something that needs to be expressed, that might be the object of consideration or of a plan of action, but the power of emotions will not allow it; the sway of emotions is the force that holds everything together, enjoying its own ephemeral wholeness, for it knows no greater pleasure than the realization of non-becoming, the calming pause provided by the state of inconsonance.

I have no way of knowing what effect these silences had on others, on Mother and Father, for example, but I know that during these silences I acquired experiences far more profound than my age entitled me to; in a peculiar way, I even surmised that this permanently transitional state of inconsonance would always be both benevolent and malevolent for me, and this frightened me, because I would much rather have resembled those who, landing on either side of this border region, managed to establish a firm foothold.

In short, I had a premonition of my woeful future, and I cannot decide even now whether this happened because, faithfully following Dr. Köhler's instructions, I had actually reached the state his cure had promised, or, conversely, because I was able to comprehend the old man's exercises since my fate had predisposed me to this more reflective state of being; the latter possibility seems more likely, though my predisposition may have been colored and strengthened by my sense of duty, which along with my pedantry stemmed not from diligence or interest in an active life — this I realized even before the Heiligendamm vacations — but much more from a desire somehow to conceal from the world my deliciously obscure conditions, brought on by my lascivious indolence, letting neither my face nor my movements betray my whereabouts (Please, do not disturb!), so that retreating behind the partition of compulsively performed duties I might be free to daydream about what really interested me.

I was born to lead two separate lives, or, I should say, the two halves of my divided life lacked harmonious congruity, or, to be still more precise, even if my public life had been the matching half of my secret existence, I would have felt an odd and jarring strain between them: it was the quagmire of a guilty conscience, something difficult to negotiate, because my self-imposed discipline in public resulted in a kind of dull and halting obtuseness for which I had to compensate myself by indulging in ever more fevered fantasies, and that, in turn, not only widened the gap between my two halves but made each of the two more isolated in its own sphere, rendering me less and less successful in rescuing anything from one and shifting it to the other, a process that in time became painful; the psyche would not tolerate my acts of self-denial, and the pain I experienced evoked a fervent desire to be like other people, who displayed no symptoms of a suppressed, tension-filled guardedness; I learned well how to read thoughts from facial expressions, how immediately to identify with these thoughts, but this mimetic ability to empathize, this desire for otherness, also led to bouts of mental anguish and brought no relief, for I realized I could not be another person, could only appear to be someone else, and total identification was as impossible as fusing my own two halves and making my secret life public, or, conversely, as impossible as freeing myself from my own illusions and compulsions and becoming like other people who are usually called hale and hearty.

I could not but consider my nearly uncontrollable inclinations to be a disease, a peculiar curse, a sinful aberration, although in hopeful moments I saw them as nothing more serious than an autumn cold which — even if I felt utterly lost when suffering from it — some hot tea, a cold compress, a few bitter, fever-reducing pills, and honey-sweet compotes could easily cure, and which I always knew, and could tell in advance, in the brief lulls between spells of fever, would ultimately, when I first got up and went to the window, make me feel light, cool, and clean, and also mildly disappointed, for though the swaying tree branches might seem to be lunging at me, their soft, leafy palms ready to snatch me away, I could see that nothing had changed on the street, nothing and no one had been disturbed by my illness, my room had not been transformed into a vast hall reverberating with the footfalls of giants; everything looked as it should — even friendlier and more familiar, actually, because the objects no longer evoked unpleasant memories associated with events thought to be long past — everything was safe and sound and exactly, almost indifferently, in place; it was some such release or cleansing I kept yearning for, though for those embarrassing and shameful reveries of mine I knew I'd have to find the remedy myself.

That day, having completed our fresh-air treatment, we first began to walk toward the station, and in this not even I, conditioned though I was by the very uneventfulness of our lives to notice the subtlest of changes, saw anything out of the ordinary, though Father, slightly out of breath, did stop the exercise a little before the prescribed time and, as if he had just gone through a terrible ordeal, leaned his pleasantly ample body against the stone parapet and with ironic self-satisfaction looked back at Mother; he meant to turn toward the sea, but could not resist looking back, which wasn't something unusual, either; he always did that, for the sea, which Mother invariably referred to as "enchanting," like the sights of nature in general, bored Father no less than these ludicrous breathing exercises; what was there to look at, anyway; "As far as I'm concerned, my dear, this is nothing but a large body of empty water," he would opine, unless a ship happened to move across the horizon, for then he could play at guessing its stupefyingly slow progress by picking a "reasonably fixed" point onshore, establishing its angle to the ship's original position, and then gauging the changes in the angle: "It has moved twelve degrees to the west," he might cry out unexpectedly, and on occasion he would also offer rhetorical remarks about the relativities observable in the trajectory of human existence; but just as he never expected us to follow the trends of his thoughts—"Human thoughts are for the most part the by-products of basic life functions," he claimed, "because the brain, like the stomach, needs always to be fed with stuff it likes to digest, and the mouth, let's not condemn it for this, merely brings up bits of this ill-chewed stuff'—Father was gracious enough, when his own temper didn't get the best of him, not to spoil other people's pleasures, and, indeed, made it clear that it was the plain sight of human pleasures and exertions that he found most interesting and entertaining, that were the very objects of his delight; and perhaps it was his lack of interest in natural phenomena that might explain why he was attracted to everything that was coarse, common, and lowly, experiencing the broadly and universally elemental through the raw, cruder forces of human nature and thus for him everything refined and sophisticated served only the purpose of concealing its own true essence and was therefore worthy only of anger and biting scorn—"Theodor, you are simply insufferable," Mother would say to him at times, clearly annoyed, though she must have been pleased if pained to know that her ingrained habits, to which she clung tenaciously, were being continuously exposed; but there was something alarmingly two-faced in Father's behavior, because he was reluctant to formulate a clear-cut, straightforward opinion about anything, though he did have opinions, very definite ones, about everything, but pretending to be indecisive and impressionable, he agreed with everyone about everything — oh no, he wasn't going to argue, he deeply respected everyone's right to an opinion, he merely weighed the pros and cons and, almost as if searching for evidence to support other people's assertions, put things in the conditional mood and posed his unwieldy questions so awkwardly that acquaintances, aware always of his ungainly, larger-than-average build, thought him charming; "Pardon me, my dear Thoenissen," Privy Councillor Frick was wont to say, "but with such thighs and such a barrel chest, you cannot help being a democrat," or as Fräulein Wohlgast put it, "Our Thoenissen is playing the clumsy bear cub again" — counting on and enjoying this kind of reaction, Father kept on fussing until the whole edifice of the argument gently collapsed, without offending anyone, almost as if by itself; but at other times he wasn't so circumspect and would greet an assertion with such boisterous enthusiasm, such resounding astonishment (my ghost story was a case in point), and inundate it with such a fierce and exalted torrent of words which like all effusiveness had a certain childlike appeal, and go on to exaggerate, color, and embellish every little detail to such an extent that the statement completely lost its original dimensions, a riotous imagination inflated it into a monster of such absurd proportions that it lifted off, away from any notion of reality, no longer fitting into or connected to anything; Father showed no mercy in this game of his but kept embroidering and intensifying it until the original idea, the modest casing of reality, became so fatally distended that it burst from the pressure of its own emptiness; of course it wasn't these dubious if entertaining flights of fancy that so upset my mother — I think that words, insofar as they went beyond polite clichés and the vernacular of daily concerns, remained out of her grasp, so the subtleties of Father's verbal games were bound to elude her, by which I don't mean to imply that she was dull or limited, though alas the opposite wasn't true either, if only because her strict puritanical upbringing, or perhaps her inherently rigid and repressed nature, had made it impossible for her to realize her intellectual potential or to develop her other, emotional-physical sensibilities, so that everything about her was disturbingly unfinished, much like her life itself, and for that reason it probably would have been more appropriate if on her eternal resting place, instead of a winged angel tearing at her breast, Father had erected a statue of something more fitting, more dignified, for there was certainly nothing angelically feminine about Mother, and if we must dwell on this banal symbolism, picture a delicate pedestal supporting a densely fluted marble pillar that is brutally broken asunder, its ragged fissure exposing the stone's coarse inner texture, contrasting sharply with the finely polished exterior: this would have been a more apt representation, one that would have impressed me each time I visited her grave.

On my long walks back home (if I may still refer to the city of my birth as home), having had my fill of the narrow, chaotically bustling streets, I enjoyed cutting across the old city and resting my gaze on the fields stretching into the distance beyond the city gate, where I'd turn precisely and purposefully in the direction where, over the hills, I could make out Ludwigsdorf, the village that Hilde and I used to visit every Saturday afternoon; even though spending time in the cemetery was never part of my plans, I could not escape its attraction, and it also happened to be on the way, though I could have avoided it by not taking Finstertorstrasse, but it was so tempting to walk through the crumbling brick fence with little shrubs sprouting in the cracks and, like a frequent visitor, feeling at ease and glad to have returned, to roam about the moldering, weed-ridden crypts and bright, flower-covered mounds in this ancient cemetery until, finally, coming to our winged angel that was destined, rather tragically, to renew the appearance of our family vault — but perhaps that was the very reason I went there: to see it.

It had to be some self-tormenting impulse that led me there, because for one thing this work, irritatingly amateurish in its own right, offended my good taste and my aesthetic sense, and for another, here in front of this statue the anger I felt toward Father, the revulsion and hatred could finally surface and be intensified by the trite sentimentality and calculated falsity with which the stonecutter had tried to reconcile his client's express wishes with his own so-called artistic concepts, for while he hadn't modeled the angel's head directly after my mother's but had augmented his own memories of her with the artistic ingenuity of using the portrait of her hanging on the dining-room wall, a rose-tinted image of Mother as a young girl, he nevertheless managed to slip some of Mother's characteristic features into that sweetly virginal, little-girl face: the angel's abruptly protruding brow and close-set eyes were reminiscent of Mother's forehead and eyes; the thin, gently curved nose, somewhat impudent lips, and charmingly pointed chin did bring to mind Mother's mouth and chin; but to make the confusion utter and complete, the crudely articulated stone cloak — in itself completely alien to any human shape — revealed the outlines of such an ethereally fragile body — with high-set, small, barely budding, yet aggressive breasts, a round belly, softly bulging buttocks, and hips a little bonier than necessary — and the wind, blowing into the angel's face and dramatically sweeping back her hair, made the cloak cling to the deep groin of this slender, about-to-ascend figure with such intrusive shamelessness that a viewer, faced with this hodgepodge of coarse details, could not possibly contemplate death or the possibility of dying; oddly enough, the statue did not evoke anything lifelike or natural, unless one considered natural the pitiful imaginings of an all-too-accommodating, aging artisan; and the tomb was vulgar and tasteless, too vulgar and tasteless to waste words or feelings on it if its creation had been the result of an unfortunate accident — the stonecutter's inability to realize, with noble simplicity, what Father had asked him to do; but no, it was neither accident nor coincidence but, on the contrary, the secret nature of necessity — unmistakably signaling an imminent doom — revealed that this statue was more a monument to my father's depravity than a memorial to my mother's life.

But who could have foreseen then, in the mundane portents of our days, the future in its entirety?

"We'll be late for the train," Father said, still there on the seashore, and almost imperceptibly his expression changed, the ironic self-satisfied look he had worn while leaning on the parapet and looking at Mother now mingling with a kind of impatient embarrassment; Mother, however, appeared to ignore both the odd intonation and the unusual sentence— unusual in that it was uttered at all; she made no reply.

She couldn't, unless she was going to interrupt her breathing exercise, because at this moment she was busy keeping her mouth open, her tongue stuck out, and with rhythmical, panting breaths she was trying to expel from her stomach the gradually inhaled, forcibly held-in air — like many women, she found this abdominal breathing difficult; but there was also a sort of offended, provocatively didactic intent in Mother's silence, a suggestion of increased tension that chose silence as a means to indicate that what had just happened would not pass without consequences, because they had an agreement; they had an agreement, concluded sometime ago, in tones that for my benefit were meant to be jocular but turned out to be serious, fueled by heated emotions, for just such occasions, when Father could no longer endure this "bestial existence," as he liked to put it, and it came about during one of those fresh-air exercises when Father, totally unexpectedly and with his most unruly grin on his face, put an end to his sufferings, which he had tried to ease by much groaning, puffing, and wheezing, and glanced over at Mother: a transparently blatant curiosity appeared in his eyes, hovering like a cloud, a look neither amusing nor congruent with his otherwise laughing demeanor, a look I knew well even if at the time I did not understand it, and his face became frighteningly exposed, attractively vulnerable, as if every other facial expression of his, though perfected and deemed authentic for most social occasions, was a mere subterfuge, a mask to hide, guard, and protect him, and now he was revealed, the real he was freed at last, unable to hold himself back from himself any longer — and he was beautiful, he looked really beautiful then: his black hair curled over his gleaming forehead, dimples of silent laughter quivered on his round cheeks, his eyes turned a bluer blue, and his fleshy lips parted a little — and then, gliding with dreamlike swiftness up to Mother, he simply reached toward her mouth and, using three fingers with a sensitivity and daintiness that belied the abruptness of the move, seized the stuck-out tongue by its root, whereupon Mother, with the raw instinct of self-defense, first jerked her head back to keep from retching and then, probably surprising even herself, bit Father's fingers so violently that he cried out in pain; from then on it was agreed that during exercises Father was supposed to watch the sea "and not me, do you understand? not me, but the sea! you are unbearable, do you hear? your look is unbearable" — yet when the moment came and Father, bored with exercising, leaned on the parapet, I always sensed in the tension of Mother's body, along with fear and reticence, her wish that he not turn to the sea, that he do something to her, something startling and scandalous that would end those painful and pointless exertions which, because of her heavy menstruation that lasted for months, she had to continue if she wanted her health restored; she wanted to be free to follow Father to that secret region his dimpled smile and clouded glance so suggestively hinted at; yes, she wanted him to do with her as he pleased — yet she also may have suspected the situation was quite the opposite of what she wished for, because her fears and reticence were far stronger than her desires.

Since I was more inclined to comply with Dr. Köhler's instructions, Mother liked me to stand right next to her, quite close, I might say in the heat of her body's warmth, so close that the shoulder ruffles of her puffed-sleeve dress almost touched my face, but this certainly did not mean that in her frustration she sought solace in me or began to have impermissible and troubling feelings of tenderness for me — I don't think she harbored such feelings for anybody — no, there was a purely logical reason we ended up next to each other: this way she could hear and then follow the rhythm of my breathing, and by the same token, if she faltered or was out of breath or, letting her mind wander, got confused, I could wait for her and help her get back on track; I was able to hold my breath for a long time, wait for and enjoy the slight dizziness that would displace my feelings while things I could only see before but not feel grew sharper and pervaded my senses; I could lose myself at last and be anything I wanted — a distant sound, the crest of a wave, a seagull, a falling leaf landing atop the stone wall, or just vacant air — until in the redness of the blood rushing to my brain everything would slowly turn dark, yet the instinct to breathe would still force me to hear distinctly and sense how Mother, with a few interpolated exhalations and inhalations, was reverting to our previous rhythm and how, her own breath balancing at a precarious standstill, she'd wait for me to take the lead again; we did not look at and could not see each other, our bodies did not touch, yet only incaution and inexperience could explain and excuse the blindness with which she allowed us to stray into such emotionally dangerous territory; she should have known that we were doing something we shouldn't have, and that in this instance she was the seducer, because mutual sensation, when deprived of tactile and visual contact, will resort to more receptive, more primitive, one might even say more animal-like means, and then the other body's heat, odor, mysterious emanations and rhythms can convey much more than a glance, a kiss, or an embrace ever could; this is true in lovemaking as well: the various positions and techniques are never an end but merely the means of descent into the depths, while the end keeps concealing itself in deeper and deeper regions, beyond ever heavier curtains, and if it allows itself to be caught and exposed at all, it will do so only in the experience of unfulfillable pleasure and unattainable hope.

And now, twenty years later, and only a few days before my thirtieth birthday, which, on the strength of an intuition, a persistent though inexplicable premonition, I had come to consider — as it happened, correctly — to be a highly significant turning point in my life, I decided to forgo the pleasure of spending yet another pleasant afternoon with my fiancée and of being the guest of honor at my own birthday party, which her parents had arranged for me, and instead, seeking a refuge worthy of the supposed significance of the day, I turned to solitude, again to solitude, or rather to a more intimate tête-à-tête with my betrothed; delayed by some business engagement, my future father-in-law had not yet come home, and when the lovely Frau Itzenpiltz, using the excuse of having to see about supper, considerately withdrew, leaving the two of us alone in the room, I told Helene about my intention to travel; she had no objections at all — on the contrary, I felt she agreed and understood that it was imperative that the first chapters of the narrative I had been planning for years be committed to paper before our wedding day, to make certain that the expected change in our lifestyle would not divert me from my original ambitions or, worse, cause me to abandon them—"I feel, Helene, I really do, that you do not require a detailed explanation," I said to her in a whisper, and the sincerity of my words was no doubt enhanced by the fact that I clasped her hand gently, and our cheeks were so close I could feel whiffs of my own breath mingled with hers on my face; the red of dusk was playing with the patterns of the silk hangings on this warm autumn day, the windows were open; "Still, I find it necessary, Helene, to speak of something I can broach only with the utmost reluctance, for it is so dark and morally dubious.. what I intend to tell you increases the perils of your undertaking as much as it does my own responsibility, please realize that; you can still change your mind," I said, and knowing full well she wouldn't, I laughed, teasingly; "What I intend to say, then, is that happiness, though it ought to be at the very center of my heart's desires, is not, for no amount of explaining and quibbling will make it conducive to artistic creation, so if I leave now, I am deliberately exchanging the happiness I know can be mine when I am with you for the unhappiness I always feel when not in your company, the unhappiness I knew before we met" — needless to say I was lying to her, while pleased to be affecting an air of sincerity, or, I should say, my confession was sincere inasmuch as it was a pretext only; and being able to deceive her, seeing her fall under my spell so easily, made her even more attractive to me, but at the same time, precisely because in her gullibility she laid herself so open, precisely because she couldn't be anything but what she was — tears of anguish were brightening her blue eyes — the real sentiment I wanted to express grew ever heavier within me; "Away from here, I don't ever want to see you again" is what I should have said to her, because I could not resist the deep-seated urge to escape and, in a sense, to disappear for good, as in fact once, while leaving their house, I did catch myself mumbling, completely unawares and spitefully, "It's finished, done with, I'm free" — and if now, having the luxury to fantasize, I try to imagine what would have happened if that afternoon before my departure I had not merely looked for a pretext but spoken candidly to her, what I see before me is the face of a young woman whose translucent white skin and soft round features give her an uncertain, almost ethereal look, though the pale freckles scattered around the delicate nose and the thick bronze-red hair imbue it with a curious vitality, and this face shows no surprise, on hearing my news, indeed breaks into a smile, as if it had been waiting for these words; when Helene smiles like this, with full-mouthed enjoyment, she looks older and more experienced, because in her moistly gleaming teeth there is a touch of wanton willfulness; she quickly wipes away the teardrop brought to her eyes by the moral superiority of knowing she has acquiesced obligingly to my plan, and yet she makes a gesture that, in the heat of the moment, excited by each other's breath, we both long for: it would have to have been a very common gesture, but this is the point where my imagination comes to a respectful halt, given Helene's then still untouched sensuality; leaving, then, after a supper spent in a convivial family atmosphere and a farewell which in the circumstances seemed almost too lighthearted, I may have carried away with me Helene's earnestly given consent, yet I could not but feel our future to be ominous and threatening, since all signs indicated we would have to build it on insincerity, insincerity in the guise of mutual attentiveness and consideration, because, on the one hand, it seemed that my unavoidable physical attraction to her would be nourished not by the kind of raw and inexplicable force that, as far as I knew, one felt in real love, but only by an exquisite sense of beauty, a titillating vulnerability, and on the other hand, I didn't think she would ever admit that to endure living with her own fragile emotional sensibilities, she herself needed those coarser gestures, a secret lewdness which she could not possibly expect me to provide and the presumed lack of which would not be compensated either by the mysteriousness of my obscure silences or by the lies of my playful fits of sincerity.

Of course it wasn't coarse sensuality or an inclination to mutually shared lewdness that I was lacking, and in any case, I don't really believe in a refinement that can forgo physicality and still remain healthy; but beyond the simpleminded fear every young man must feel before leading his bride to the altar, I was fearful and anxious for another reason: our relationship, at least outwardly, reminded me very much of the unbalanced and unresolvable tensions between my parents; in every sign of physical coarseness I detected Father's gestures, and in the longing for them I saw Mother's needs; if I hadn't possessed the gift of self-knowledge that enables us to carefully separate the overlapping planes of cause and effect, thereby discovering the endless circular stairways of our emotions which, dissatisfied with mere form and appearance, lead us downward and inward to ultimate understanding — without this gift, even our engagement would have become unbearable by the knowledge that my malady was hereditary, that fate condemned me to the humiliating absurdity of having to repeat my parents' lives and misdeeds, of being the same as they, and even of dragging an innocent outsider into this fatal sameness.

The Soft Light of the Sun

The snow was already melting, and though I was afraid of the dogs I decided to walk home from school through the woods.

One had to step carefully here; the trail, beaten into the heavy, clayey soil, wound steeply around the gnarled trunks and coiling roots of ancient mistletoe-laden oaks and plunged through the underbrush, clumps of wild roses, elder, and hawthorn that looked impenetrable even in their barrenness; melting snow had turned the thick layers of leaves sodden and I kept losing my footing on the slippery surface; seeking an outlet, tiny rivulets had cut grooves right through the middle of the trail, creating a regular brook that ran sparkling and gushing in its rusty yellow bed, swelling up where the trail took a sudden turn, then rushing on, engulfing stones and pebbles; imagining dense forests and wild mountain rapids all around, I leaped from one bank of my stream to the other, zigzagging back and forth, trusting my body to the slope's pull, sensing that the more daring my leaps were — the harder I landed and the longer I stayed in the air, finding the site of my next takeoff with a single glance — the more confident I became and the less likely I was to slip or fall; I was racing downhill, I was flying.

At the bottom of the forest the trail reached flat ground, coming to rest in a clearing with patches of snow, at the opposite end of which I saw someone standing in the bushes.

I could not turn back, couldn't escape, but simply had to slow down my breathing, make sure I didn't pant or wheeze, so he wouldn't think he was making me so excited.

He stepped out from behind the bushes and started toward me.

I wanted to appear cool and calm, as if not the least bothered by this accidental encounter, but my back had got uncomfortably wet from all that running, my ears were burning and must have looked ridiculously red in the cold; my legs suddenly felt awkwardly short and stiff, and it was as if I were seeing myself with his eyes.

The sky above us was clear, a great blue expanse, distant and blank.

Behind the woods, caught in the tangled treetops, the soft light of the sun broke through, but the air remained piercing cold; crows cawed, magpies chattered in the eerie silence, and one could feel that as soon as the sun set everything would be silent and stiff again.

We walked toward each other very slowly.

On his long dark-blue overcoat gold buttons gleamed, and he slung his soft leather briefcase casually over his shoulder, as always, lugging it on his back, which made him twist his long neck and bend over a little; still, his gait was as loose and graceful as if he were swaying to and fro in some oblivious softness; he thrust his head high, he was watching.

It took a very long time to cover the distance between us, because from the moment I had spotted him behind the bushes I had to sort out, and also alert, my most contradictory and secret feelings: "Krisztián!" I would have loved to cry out in my surprise, if only because in his name, which I hadn't the courage to utter even during the abruptly cutoff budding stage of our friendship and kept muttering it only to myself, I sensed the same discriminating elegance I did in his whole being; his name had the same irresistible attraction for me I knew I mustn't yield to in any shape or form; saying his name out loud would be like touching his naked body, which is why I avoided him, always waiting until he began walking home with others so I wouldn't walk with him or his way; even in school I was careful not to wind up next to him, lest I'd have to talk to him or, in a sudden commotion, brush against his body; at the same time I kept watching him, tailed him like a shadow, mimicked his gestures in front of the mirror, and it was painfully pleasurable to know that he was completely unaware of my spying on him, secretly imitating him, trying to evoke in myself those hidden qualities and characteristics that would make me resemble him; he couldn't know, or feel, that I was always with him and he with me; in reality, he didn't even bother to look at me, I was like a neutral, useless object to him, completely superfluous and devoid of interest.

Of course my sober self cautioned me not to acknowledge these passionate feelings; it was as if two separate beings coexisted in me, totally independent of each other: at times the joys and sufferings his mere existence caused me seemed like nothing but little games, not worth thinking about, because one of my two selves hated and detested him as much as my other self loved and respected him; since I was eager to avoid giving any visible sign of either love or hate, I was the one who acted as though he were but an object — divulging my love, much too desirous and passionate to let him in on it, would have rendered me totally defenseless, while my hatred drove me to humiliating fantasies that I was too scared to act on — and it was I, not he, who acted as though I was unapproachable, impervious even to his accidental glances.

When he was no more than an arm's length from me and we both stopped, he said, "There's something I'd like to ask of you," calling me by my name, his tone cool and matter-of-fact, "and I'd appreciate it greatly if you could do it for me."

I felt the blood rushing to my face.

Which he, too, would immediately notice.

The affable artlessness with which he uttered my name, though I knew he did it only for the sake of good form, had a devastating effect: now not only were my legs too short but I felt like one large head hovering somewhere close to the ground, an ill-proportioned repulsive insect; and in my embarrassment I blurted out something I shouldn't have: "Krisztián!" I said, pronouncing his name aloud, and because it sounded too tender, frightened almost, anyway humble and out of tune with his own resolve to wait for me and even approach me with a request, he raised his eyebrows as if he had heard wrong or couldn't believe what he had heard, and obligingly leaned closer: "What's that? Come again?" he said, and I, finding some unexpected pleasure in his embarrassment, made myself sound even softer, even more amiable; "Oh nothing, nothing," I said quietly, "I just said it, just said your name, anything wrong with that?"

His thick lips parted, his eyelids flickered, his light brown complexion darkened slightly as if from repressed excitement, his black pupils contracted making the pale green irises seem dilated; but I don't think it was the shape of his face, the wide and easily knitted forehead, the lean cheeks, the dimpled chin and disproportionately small, almost pointed, perhaps still undeveloped nose, that made the most profound and most painfully beautiful impression on me; it was the coloring: in the green of his eyes, beaming out of the savagely sensual brown of his skin, there was something abstractly ethereal, clamoring for heights, while his chapped red lips and the unmanageably curly mass of his black hair were pulling me down into dark depths; the animal boldness of his glance made me recall our intimate moments together when, lost in each other's looks, which always suggested open hostility as well as hidden love, we could accurately sense that our mutual attraction was based simply on uncontrollable curiosity, which was only an illusion of something, though strong enough to draw us close, bind us together, deeper than any so-called dangerous inclination could ever be because it was undirected, insatiable; yet the synchronized narrowing of our pupils and harmoniously dilating irises surely disclosed something in our eyes that made palpably clear that our supposed intimacy had been a sham and that in reality we were irreconcilably different.

Looking into his eyes I seemed to see not another person but two terrifying magic balls.

This time, however, we couldn't hold each other's gaze for long; though neither of us tried to avoid the other or look away, I saw the change: his eyes lost their inherently brilliant openness, they filled with purpose and motive, and their surface became dimmer, glazed over; they took cover.

"I must ask you," he said quietly but sharply, and he stepped closer to keep me from interrupting him again and roughly gripped my arm, "I must ask you not to report me to the principal, or if you already have, go and try to take it back."

He kept biting his lips, pulling my arm, and blinking his eyes, and his voice lost its self-confident soft depth; he was thrusting out his words as if he wanted not even the air that carried them to touch his lips, wanted to expel these hated sounds, had to feel he had done all he could, although he must have had as little faith in the effectiveness of his own words as he did in my amenability, and for this reason alone I don't think he was very interested in my answer; besides, he didn't make it clear how he thought the report was to be taken back, so I think he knew all along he was treading on slippery ground; he was looking at me, but it may have been too much of an effort to make his voice sound so thin and humble, and it's very likely he didn't even see my face: in his eyes I must have been a mere blot, dissolving in its own vagueness.

But as far as I was concerned, a wonderful feeling of superiority made me more self-assured than ever.

A request had been put to me which I had the power to grant or refuse; the moment had arrived when I could prove my own importance, when at my own will and pleasure I could either reassure or destroy him, with a single word avenge all my secret injuries — injuries which ultimately were not even his doing, but which I had inflicted on myself because of him, the bitter pains of being ignored he induced in me, unwittingly and innocently, by simply being alive, by wearing nice clothes, by talking and playing with others, while with me he was unable or unwilling to establish the kind of contact I so yearned for and didn't even know what it should be like; he was almost a head taller than I, but at this moment, in the clearing, I was looking down at him; I found his forced smile distasteful, and as my body regained its normal dimensions, it assumed the lightness of that secure state in which our consciousness stops playing and struggling and, with a careless shrug, surrenders to all its contradictory emotions, rendering outward appearances and shows irrelevant; I didn't care anymore how I looked or whether he liked me or not, and while I felt the chill of cooling perspiration on my back, the dampness in my leaky shoes, the unpleasant prickles of my cheap trousers clinging to my thighs, as well as the burning in my ears, my smallness and my ugliness, there was nothing hurtful or humiliating in all this, because in spite of the unrelieved misery of bodily sensations, I was now free and powerful, felt free within and for myself; I knew I loved him, and no matter what he did I could not stop loving him; I was completely defenseless, and for that I could either take my revenge on him or forgive him, it was all the same; to be sure, he didn't seem just then as beautiful and attractive as he had been in my fantasies or when he'd overwhelm me with his sudden presence — his dark skin had turned sallow; he seemed to have eaten something with garlic in it and I didn't want to inhale the smell of his breath; to boot, the humility in his smile was so twisted, so exaggerated, that it betrayed his fear, which may have been genuine but which he was anxious not to show, preferring proudly to conceal it, to substitute mock humility; he was playing up to me and deceiving me at the same time.

I blushed and yanked away my arm.

But I did not, after all, have a choice; I couldn't simply tell him anything I felt like, since as far as my emotions were concerned every possible response led to a dead end: it hadn't occurred to me to report him, but if I were to, if now I really did, I might alienate him forever and they might even take him away; if, however, I pretended to be swayed by his plea, I'd be letting myself be misled by his clumsy show of humility, in which case his victory would be much too easy for him to love me for it; I wasn't ashamed of blushing — if anything, I wanted him to notice it, would have liked nothing more than for him to discover my feelings and then not mind them — but feeling myself blush made me realize all too clearly that nothing could help me now, that regardless of what I'd say or do, he'd slip through my fingers again and I'd be left with nothing but another unclarified moment, which he couldn't understand, and with my futile fantasies; but if that's the case, I suddenly thought, then I must be true to my convictions and act sensibly and cruelly, although this alternative would bring me close to my father and mother, even if I didn't actually think of them at the moment, because much as I would have liked to have my own convictions, I knew they weren't all mine; still, at the same time, the situation was much too unique and personal for my parents' faces or bodies to appear in my mind's eye and whisper in my ear specific words that I could then go on confidently repeating, like a parrot, but they were there all right, with the warm persistence of feeling at home, hiding out in my thoughts, ready to jump in; that's how I knew that there was a form of human behavior capable of eliminating emotional considerations and acting purely on the basis of principles known as convictions — except that I didn't have the strength to stifle my emotions.

"I'm not asking for myself!" he said even more sharply, and his hand, from which I'd just withdrawn my arm, was still in the air, hesitating; he had long fingers, a slender wrist, but I didn't let him finish, didn't want to, because I didn't want to see him like this, and I cut in: "First of all, it would be nice if you could tell the difference between denouncing and reporting."

But pretending not to have heard me, he continued the interrupted sentence: "I'd just like to spare my mother this latest unpleasantness."

We kept interrupting each other.

"If you think I'm a squealer, we've nothing further to discuss."

"I saw you go into the teachers' room after class, I did!"

"What makes you think I'm always busy with your affairs, especially yours?"

"You know my mother has a heart condition."

I burst out laughing. And there was strength in this laugh. "When you have to face the consequences of your words, then she has a heart condition."

His eyes regained their sparkle, they seemed to be illuminated from within by a cold flash of light, he was screaming, and the garlic-smelling thrusts of his words hit me in the face: "What d'you want, then? What? I'll kiss your ass, if that's what you want!"

Something stirred nearby and almost automatically we both turned our heads: a rabbit darted across the snowy clearing.

I wasn't looking at the rabbit, which having reached the edge of the clearing must have vanished in the thicket; I was watching him; in our anger, we unwittingly ended up so close to each other that if he'd paid attention he could have felt my breath, which I failed to control, pounding on his neck; the casually tied knot of his striped scarf was coming loose, the top button of his shirt was undone, and its collar must have slipped under his sweater, because his long neck appeared before me like a strange naked landscape: a vein embedded in tightening muscles and showing faintly through the smooth skin seemed to be pulsing evenly, and at slightly irregular intervals the tip of his gently protruding Adam's apple bobbed up and down; the blood that had rushed to his face while he was shouting was slowly subsiding; I could watch as his normal coloring gradually returned and his fleshy lips again parted slightly, the pale yellow light of the sun, sinking behind the woods, glimmered through the green of his eyes, his gaze following the rabbit's path, and when his eyes came to rest at a certain point, I knew the rabbit had disappeared; the persistent chatter of the magpies, the incessant cawing of crows, the smell of the air, even the tiny rustling noises of the woods seemed to have the same tangible certainty as his face, which was sharp, hard, mobile even in its immobility, with no emotions reflected in it, it simply existed, giving itself over easily and gracefully to whatever unfolded before it; for me, at this moment, it may have been not so much his loveliness, the harmony of his enviable, captivating features and coloring, though ostensibly that was what I longed for, but his inner ability to give himself over to the moment, totally, unreservedly; whenever I looked into the mirror and compared myself to him, I had to conclude that though I wasn't ugly, I really wanted to look like him, to be exactly like him; my eyes were blue, clear, and transparent, my blond hair fell on my forehead in soft waves, but I felt my sensitive, vulnerable, and fragile features were deceptively false because, though others found my face positively charming and liked to touch it, to caress it, I knew myself to be coarse, common, sinister, insidious; there was nothing nice about me, I could not love myself, I shielded my real self with a mask, and so as not to disappoint people too much, I made myself play roles that fit my outer appearance more than my inner self, trying to be pleasant, attentive, and understanding, lighthearted, cheerful, and ingratiatingly serene, though in reality I was sullen, irritable, all my senses hankered for raw pleasure, I was irascible, hateful, I would have preferred to keep my head bowed all the time, not to see or be seen by anyone, and I looked right into people's eyes only to check the effectiveness of my performance; I managed to deceive just about everyone, and yet felt comfortable only when I was alone, because the people I could easily fool I had to despise for their stupidity and blindness, while those who became suspicious, were not so gullible, or simply could not give themselves to anyone, I would cloy with such excessive attentiveness and solicitude — the effort taking up all my strength and energy — as to make myself absurdly, deliciously nauseated, and for this very reason I sensed most keenly my slyness, slipperiness, and urge to dominate when I succeeded in winning over people who were otherwise alien, even hateful or indifferent to me; I wanted everyone to love me and I couldn't love anyone; I felt beauty's seductive deception, knowing that anyone with such a fanatic craving for beauty, paying attention only to beauty, was incapable of loving and could not be loved; yet I couldn't give up this obsession, for I felt as if my allegedly handsome face were not mine, though it was useful in deceiving people; the deception was mine and gave me power; I steered clear of people who were crippled or ugly, and this was all too understandable, for even though they kept telling me I was good-looking, which I could see whenever I looked in the mirror, I still felt ugly and repulsive; I could not deceive myself, for my innermost feelings, more than the power lent me by my good looks, told me precisely what I was really like; therefore, I longed for the kind of beauty in which external and internal traits meshed, in which a harmonious exterior shielded strength and goodness, not the disarray of a twisted soul — in other words, I longed for perfection, or at least for a total identification with my true self, for the freedom to be imperfect, to be infinitely mean and wicked— but that far he would not let me go.

"I had no intention of denouncing you," I told him quietly, but he wouldn't even move his head, "and even if I wanted to, you could always deny it and say you were thinking of your dog; it would take some explaining, but you could have been thinking of your dog."

My whispered words were no heavier than the cloud of mist forming around my mouth in the cold light, and each one of them reached and touched his motionless face; I couldn't have been more cunning than this — holding out the possibility of doing something I had no intention of doing and, to counteract this mild threat, immediately offering a handy explanation with which to slip out of the net I might cast over him — but by doing this, I also betrayed my own supposed conviction: because I should have denounced him, yes, then and only then would I be strong and tough, and I just might, I just might — I couldn't possibly sink lower than this; by then I had lost all feeling of my body, I was hovering somewhere above myself yet way too low.

Words were of no consequence; nothing was more important than this mist, my exhaled breath touching his skin, but it seemed that even that wasn't enough, because his gaze became suspended; he must not have understood what I was getting at.

"It never occurred to me to do it, believe me!"

He finally turned his head to me and I could see in his eyes that his suspicions were gone.

"No?" he asked, also in a whisper, and his eyes again became open and penetrable, the way I liked. "No, it didn't," I whispered decisively, although I no longer knew what this denial was referring to; because I could finally penetrate that glance and no longer had to playact and, even more important, felt my own eyes opening up. "No?" he asked again, suspicious no longer but like one who wants to be sure of his own love, and the puff of mist accompanying the word touched my lips. "No, not at all," I whispered, and then suddenly there was silence between us, we were looking at each other, and we were close, so close that I hardly needed to move my head forward, with my mouth I touched his lips.

My mother, who had been brought home from the hospital three days earlier, was still bedridden, and when I was left alone after Krisztián disappeared behind the bushes, this was the first thing that came to my mind: Mother lying in her big bed and reaching out to me with her long, naked arm.

I could still feel his lips on my mouth, the chafing of that unknown skin, the softness and scent of the fleshy lips that stayed with me, on my mouth; I still felt the slight quiver of the two lips, their slow parting under my closed mouth, and then the slowly exhaled air that became mine, and the air he inhaled that was taken from me, and though I may seem to be contradicting myself, I don't think this could be called a kiss, not only because our lips had barely touched or because this touch was for both of us highly instinctive, and its purposeful, I might say erotic, application neither of us could have fully understood, but most of all because at that moment my mouth was but the ultimate means of persuasion, the final, wordless argument; with his last exhalation he breathed his fear on me, and when he inhaled, he drew in his newfound trust from me.

I don't even know how we finally separated, for there must have been an infinitesimal fraction of that moment in which I totally gave myself over to feeling his lips, sensing at the same time that with his breath he was also giving himself over to me. Being aware of this, I'm not about to claim (it would be ridiculous to do so) that our contact, our unique form of reasoning, lacked sensuality; no, it was very sensual but free — and this must be emphasized, it was purely free — of any ulterior motives with which adult love, in its own natural way, complements a kiss; our mouths, in the purest of possible ways, and regardless of what had gone before or what would follow, restricted themselves to what two mouths in the fraction of a second could give each other: fulfillment, comfort, and release; and that's when I must have closed my eyes, in that instant when no sight or circumstance could possibly have mattered anymore; when I think about that moment now, I still must ask myself whether a kiss can be anything else or anything more than that?

When I opened my eyes he was already talking.

"Do you know where rabbits stay in winter?"

And though his voice sounded deeper and perhaps even raspier than usual, there was no urgency in the question, asked with such self-evident ease, as if the rabbit had run across the field just then and not several minutes earlier, as if nothing had happened between those two points in time; as I watched his face, his eyes, his neck, the way he stood against a shimmering, opaline background laced with branches and treetops, as I took in this sight which seemed so very distant to me, I must have experienced momentarily the dread of a fatal, irreparable mistake: his question didn't mean that in his quite natural, almost obligatory embarrassment, he wanted to hide behind a neutral topic, for neither in his eyes nor in other features of his face nor in his posture could I discover the slightest trace of embarrassment, and he remained as poised, confident, cool as he had been on other occasions — or perhaps it would be more correct to say that after having been relieved of his fears by the kiss, he became his unreachable former self, which certainly did not mean he was unconcerned about or indifferent to what was happening to him; on the contrary, he was so open to each and every moment of his existence, always the very moment he was compelled to live in, that all past and possible future moments were forced out of him, so that he seemed to stand outside his own physical being, as if he were never really where one assumed him to be; but I forever remained a prisoner of what had already passed, and a single emphatic moment could arouse so much pain and passion in me that I had no time left in my being with which to create the next moment, and thus I, like him though in a different way, also remained somewhere outside; I could never keep up with him.

"I've no idea where," I mumbled listlessly, as if I'd just been awakened.

"Maybe they stay in the ground."

"In the ground?"

"I'd bet with some clever trap we could catch a whole brood."

Later, I must have opened the door calmly, without rushing, and most likely did not let my schoolbag drop as usual, hitting the floor with a thud, and the door didn't bang shut behind me, so people in the house had no way of knowing I was home; I didn't run up the polished oak stairs leading to the foyer, though I was not conscious of this alteration, of the skipped routine, and had absolutely no inkling that from now on I'd move about more quietly and cautiously, would slow down and become even more introspective, but of course that could not keep me from noticing everything going on around me, indeed from seeing everything even more keenly, only from the perspective of indifference; the dining room's glass double door was wide open, and from the faint clinking of dishes I could tell I was late, lunch was nearly over, though this didn't bother me at all, because it was nice and dark in the foyer, pleasantly warm, only a little afternoon light seeping through the opalescent panels of the front door, now and then the radiator giving out a scraping, bubbling sound, followed always by an echoing, metallic clang of the pipes; I must have stood there a long time, in the heavy smell of freshly fried beef patties, and could even see myself in the old full-length mirror, though at the moment the purple reflection of the rug was more important to me than that of my face or body, the black outlines of which faded gently into the mirror's silvery gleam.

I understood well — why wouldn't I — that by mentioning the trapping of rabbits he was raising the possibility of some joint undertaking, and I also sensed that, if he was expecting an answer, he was waiting for me to pull myself together, to revert to the customary norms of our relationship, to come up with a workable idea about what to do together — it could be anything at all, no need to insist on those stupid rabbits, any joint venture requiring strength and skill and therefore manly; but I found this possibility, offered to me with patient chivalry, much too simplistic and somewhat ludicrous, in view of what had just happened between us, not only because it no longer suited our age but also because its very childishness betrayed an idea born of defensive haste, aimed at ignoring what had just transpired; in short, it was a cover-up, an evasion, a diverting of emotions, though still a more sensible solution than anything I could have come up with in the circumstances; but at that moment, in that situation, the last thing I wanted was to be sensible; the joy of having been released, unbound, was pouring out of me like a stream of some tangible substance, something emanating from my body, rippling forward, seeking him out, and I had no other wish in the world than to remain in this state, the body yielding fully to everything that was instinctive, sensual, and emotional in it, losing as much of its weight and mass as was displaced by the liberated energies, indeed ceasing to be the body which we feel as a burden; I wanted to preserve this state and extend it to all my future moments; I wanted to break down all the barriers, the forces of habit, education, decorum, everything that robbed us of ordinary moments by preventing us from communicating the most profound truths of our being to others, until it is no longer we who existed in time but time that existed in our stead, vacuous, efficient; trying mulishly to preserve myself for this moment, unable to address him in anything resembling a normal, everyday voice, I had to feel that nothing I was going through could possibly reach him, though he had to marshal every bit of his apparently quite humane psychological skills to remain so calm and patient at the sight of such unbridled longing; he appeared to be a smooth, blank wall impassively deflecting and hurling back everything emanating from me in his direction, with the result that it was I, not he, who was surrounded by this emanation; I was encased in a shell, and I also felt that this shell and I were one; though I might quite pleasantly float around in it, I knew that one careless move and it would disintegrate, one emphatic word and everything that had erupted from the body would dissolve into thin air, as our breaths did; he was looking at me, straight into my eyes, and indeed we saw nothing but each other's eyes, yet he was becoming more and more distant, while I stayed where I was, because I wanted to stay where I was, and as I was, since only in this insanely defenseless state could I perceive my true self; I might say that there, and in this way, I felt for the first time the grandeur, beauty, and peril of the senses raging within me; this was the real me, not the uncertain outline the mirror may have shown as my face or body, but this; I could not help noticing his growing remoteness — first, the fleeting shock which, despite his good intentions and self-discipline, made its mark on his face, and then the tiny, childishly conceited smile with which, having overcome the gentle shock, he managed to move so far away that he could even afford to glance back at me curiously, and do it with a measure of compassion; but I said nothing, I made no move; for me, existence reached its perfect fulfillment in this wordless state, and I was so important to myself that nothing seemed to bother me, not even the disappearance of the last trace of smile, when silence once again became acutely perceptible and we could hear the woods, magpies, a creaking branch in the distance, a stream rushing over sharp stones, our own breathing.

"Come over later," he said, his voice a little higher and thinner, which meant a great many very contradictory things at once; the unnatural intonation seemed more important than the meaning of the words, suggesting that he was ill at ease, that nothing was as simple as he would have liked to believe, and that no matter how far he had managed to get away from me with his glance, I still had a hold on him, my very silence forcing him to make the kind of concession he otherwise wouldn't have dreamed of making, and also implying that our reconciliation could not be taken seriously, that therefore I shouldn't even think of accepting his vague invitation, in fact should consider it a polite warning that I had no more right to set foot in his house now than I had had before; but the words had been uttered, and they referred to an earlier afternoon when his mother had been shouting from the window and I was holding two walnuts in my hands.

"Krijztian! Krisztián, where are you? Krisztián, why must I keep screaming? Krisztián!"

It was autumn, we were standing under the walnut tree, the garden was glowing yellow and red in the twilight heavy with mist, and he was holding a large flat stone which a moment earlier he had used for cracking walnuts, but because he hadn't even left himself enough time to straighten up, I couldn't be sure if the next moment he wasn't going to bash my head in.

"You people haven't managed to steal our house yet, you got that? And as long as the house is ours, I will kindly ask you not to set foot in it ever again, you got that?"

There was nothing funny about what he said, yet I laughed.

"You were the ones who stole this precious house of yours, from the people you used to live off; it's no sin to steal back from a thief; and that's what you people are, you are the thieves!"

Some time had passed while we weighed the consequences of our words, but no matter how deliciously pleasurable it had been to say them, it was clear from his anger and my calm though abstract satisfaction that all this was nothing but revenge, a reprisal for barely noticeable injuries that had accumulated in us during our brief but all the more passionate and stormy friendship; for months we had spent just about every hour of the day in each other's company, and it was my curiosity that had helped me push past the glaring inequalities between us; so our quarrel was the inevitable reverse of our intimacy, but, plausible explanations notwithstanding, this unexpected outburst took both of us so far afield that turning back was impossible; and as improbable as it may have seemed, I had to drop the two walnuts I was holding and hear them plop down on the wet leaves while his mother went on shouting, calling him, and I started for the gate, quite pleased with myself, as if I had settled something once and for all.

He looked straight into my eyes and waited.

But that final attempt, that ambiguously phrased last sentence, also distanced me from the moment which otherwise I could not and would not want to leave; I had to sense the growing distance not only through his eyes but in myself as well, even if his evasive invitation had no stronger an impact than a fleeting memory does, a sudden flash, no more, a mercurial fish which, thrusting itself above the motionless surface of the moment, takes one breath in the strange environment and, leaving a few quickly subsiding ripples in its wake, sinks back into the world of silence; still, that sentence was a reminder, marked out a turning point, emphatic and compelling enough to be a warning that what was happening to us now was but the consequence of a previous occurrence and would have as much to do with events yet to happen as with those that had occurred earlier; no matter how much I yearned or insisted, it was absurd to think I could remain in the moment that gave me such joy, such pleasure, even happiness; the mere fact that I was forced to experience the quick passing and disappearance of my happiness indicated that, though I may have thought I was bound to it, in truth I was no longer there, had already stepped out of it, and am only now thinking about it; yet I could not answer him, though his posture still suggested a willingness to accept a reply, and at this point I would have liked to, since I thought I could not go on without replying; and he was standing there as if he were about to take the first step, but then, flinging his schoolbag over his shoulders, he suddenly turned around and started for the bushes, going back in the same direction, toward the same spot whence he had first appeared.

A Telegram Arrives

My progress was far from steady — each new gust of wind forced me to stop, and it was all I could do to stay upright while waiting for it to subside — so it must have taken me a good half hour of pressing forward on the embankment before I realized that something had changed ominously.

The wind wasn't blowing straight at me but at a slant off the sea, which I countered by moving sideways, head and shoulders thrust into the wind, at the same time using my upturned coat collar to shield as much of my face as I could from the spray sent up by waves crashing on the rocks, though I still had to keep wiping my forehead, where the spray collected into drops and the drops, heavy with salt, formed into rivulets that gushed into my eyes and down my nose into my mouth; I might as well have closed my eyes, for I couldn't see anything, yet I did want to see the dark, as if seeing this particular darkness gave some sense to the otherwise senseless act of keeping them open; at first, only translucent gray splotches and thin strips of wispy clouds rushed past the moon, coming offshore and racing over the open waters on their way to a destination hidden in infinity, their haste, for all the graceful grandeur of their movement, made positively laughable by the impassive calm of the moon; when more massive clouds appeared, denser and thicker but no less agile, it was as if a single projector on a giant stage had been blocked by scenery, and it grew dark, completely dark, the waters had nothing to reflect, and there were no more white streaks drawn in the distance by white foamy crests; but then, just as quickly, it all turned light again, and then dark again, dark and light, always unexpectedly and unaccountably, dark and light and then darkening again; it's no accident that I've mentioned the stage— there was something theatrical, indeed dramatic, in the peculiar phenomenon of the wind above driving the clouds in exactly the opposite direction it was compelled to be blowing down here, a tension between the desires of heaven and earth — but the tension lasted only until some decisive turn occurred in the seemingly unalterable course of events on high — who knows what it was? perhaps the wind changing direction somewhere or, above the waters, getting entangled in the piled-up clouds, turning them into rain and dashing them into the ocean — and then the spells of light grew shorter, those of darkness grew longer, until, abandoning earth and water to their own darkness, the moon vanished altogether.

I could no longer see where I was going.

This way the game seemed even more exciting, for in the meantime, forgetting my fears, I had taken what is usually called the raging of the elements to be a game that embodied or substituted for the opposing forces struggling inside me, and with my own feelings thus projected into a living metaphor, I could pretend to feel secure, as if everything I witnessed were but a delightful spectacle of illusions put on solely for my amusement.

I admit, it was a pretty piece of self-deception on my part, but why shouldn't I have imagined myself to have the major role in this majestically grandiose hurricane when, in fact, for weeks I had been able to think of nothing but that I must put a violent end to my life; what could have been more reassuring now than to see this raging world locked into its own darkness, for all its destructive energies unable not only to extinguish itself but even to harm itself, with no real power over itself, just as I had none over my own self.

Recollecting the previous night, the night before my departure, the night of that certain yesterday — I hasten to emphasize this, because my encounter with the sea shifted the temporal dimension of all my previous experiences into such a soothing perspective that I would not have been at all surprised if someone had told me, "Oh no, you're quite wrong, you arrived not this afternoon but two weeks, nay, two years ago" — I must reassure myself that very little time had elapsed between my departure from Berlin and that stroll on the beach, and though this does not mean that the pleasant confusion about time could untangle my snarled emotions, the sight of the stormy sea in the night did provide a haven in which I could reflect on what had happened; so I thought of that previous night, now fading into a gentle distance, of arriving home at not too late an hour and in the dark stairway — they still hadn't repaired the lights— fumbling so long with my keys that of course Frau Kühnert, always in the kitchen at that hour, fixing her husband's sandwich for the next day, pricked up her ears; alarmed at hearing her hurrying down the long hallway, I still could not fit the key into the lock, and she stopped for a second, but then, beating me to it, threw the door wide-open and, holding a green envelope in her hand, smiled at me as if she had been long preparing to welcome me, as if she'd been waiting for this very moment, and before I had a chance to step inside, say good evening, and thank her for her trouble, she handed me the envelope, blushing as she did so; and at that instant, thanks to the ludicrous protection which the proximity of the sea raging in that starless night may have given me, I ceased to feel the faintness, bordering on loss of consciousness, which had gripped me while I was standing in the doorway and which had not left me until now; I was even amused, because the scene of my taking the envelope from a shouting Frau Kühnert registered as an overly sharp, totally unfamiliar picture.

"Telegram, my friend, you've got a telegram, a telegram!"

If at that moment I had not glanced at her rather than at the telegram — one automatically glances at anything thrust into one's hand — I might have failed to notice how strange and unusual her smile was, not that she hadn't smiled on other occasions, but with this smile she was trying to conceal her eagerness, an insatiable curiosity which despite all her theatrical experience she could not conceal; the moment the telegram reached my hand — suppressing my emotions I barely glanced at the name and address — I looked at her again, but the smile had vanished: from behind her thin, gold-rimmed glasses, her huge eyes, bulging morbidly from their sockets, seemed to be fixed on one point, my mouth, which she stared at intently and sternly, as if expecting to hear a long-delayed, thorough confession; an expression, maybe not of raw hatred, but of compassionless scrutiny, spread over her face; she wanted to see how I would react to what had to be shocking, though to her incomprehensible, news, and I had the feeling that she had already read the telegram, and felt myself growing pale, at that moment overcome by terrible faintness, though the very thought of giving myself away made me go on controlling myself, because I knew that whatever the telegram said, wherever it came from, this woman already knew or meant to find out too much about me for me to stay here; there was nothing I would more strenuously guard against than someone trying to pry into my life, so in other words, not only was I facing some sort of blow, which I had to endure with dignity, but I also had to find a new place to live.

Frau Kühnert was an astonishingly, fascinatingly ugly woman: tall and bony, with broad shoulders, from the back, especially when wearing pants, she looked very much like a man, because not only did she have long arms and big feet but her backside was as flat as an old clerk's; her hair, which she cut and bleached herself, was combed straight back, which became her but hardly made her look more feminine; her ugliness was so pronounced that it could not be mitigated even by the cunning placement of light sources in the old-fashioned, spacious apartment: during the day the sun was blocked out and heavy velvet drapes covering the lace curtains created a glimmering semidarkness; in the evening, light was provided by floor lamps with dark silk shades and wall fixtures whose glow was dimmed by little caps made of stiff waxed paper; because the chandeliers were never turned on, Professor Kühnert was forced to adopt rather peculiar work habits: he was a short man, at least a head shorter than his wife, and in build her total opposite, almost feature for feature: thin-boned, fragile, and delicate, his skin so translucently white that one could see pulsating purple blood vessels pressing against it on his temple, neck, and hands; his eyes were small, deep-set, and as insignificant and expressionless as his quietly unobtrusive way of doing his scholarly work in his poorly lit study — work that, by the way, many people judged quite significant — for there was no lamp on his huge black desk, either, and whenever Frau Kühnert called me to the telephone, I could see him rummaging with his long, thin fingers, like a blind man, among piles of newspapers, notes, and books until, by touch alone, he would identify the sought-after piece of paper, pick it out, take it across the room, past the bluish glare of the TV screen, stop under one of the small wall lamps, placed rather high up, and under its pale yellow light begin to read— sometimes leaning against the wall, which I could tell had become a habit with him, because during the day a spot, traces of regular contact left by his head and shoulders, was clearly visible on the yellow wallpaper — until, spurred on by an unexpected idea or simply by protracted brooding, he would interrupt his peaceful reading and return to his desk by the same route to jot something down; Frau Kühnert, enthroned in her comfortable armchair, seemed as unaware of the professor's repeated crossings before the television screen as the professor seemed undisturbed by the incoherent noises emanating from it or by the perpetual dimness of the apartment; I never heard them exchange a single word, though their silence did not seem to be the result of some petty, calculating revenge, and what had turned them mute to each other was not resentment — flaunted conspicuously yet indicating a very fervent attachment between man and wife, the kind of silence which rancorous couples often give as a present to each other in order to extort something — no, their silence had no express purpose, but it is possible that a slowly cooling mutual hatred had stiffened them into this neutral state, although nothing seemed to allude to its cause, since they appeared perfectly content and well-adjusted, behaving in each other's presence like two wild animals of different species, acknowledging each other's presence, but also acknowledging that the laws of the species were far stronger than the laws of the sexes, and since each could be neither a mate nor a prey, communication was also impossible.

There I was, watching Frau Kühnert's face with a certain resignation, in spite of my emotional state, for I knew from experience that I couldn't get rid of her easily, since the more I tried, the louder and more insistent she'd become; I kept on looking in her eyes and decided to suffer this one skirmish, since it would be the last; black-stemmed, bleached-blond hairs like brush bristles poked out of the fleshy welts of her low brow— my fingers were telling me the envelope was open — her nose was long and narrow, her lipstick cracked, and of course it was unavoidable that my glance would stray farther down to her breasts, the only part of her body that offered some compensation for so much ugliness: huge, disproportionately large breasts which, without a brassiere, might be somewhat disappointing, but the nipples pressing hard against the tight sweater were certainly no deception; as we were standing in the door of the almost totally dark hallway — at the same moment she began shouting again and Professor Kühnert emerged from the living room, with his white shirt opened to his waist (he always wore white shirts, and when reading or taking notes he would first yank off his tie, then slowly unbutton his shirt so he could stroke his youthfully hairless chest while pacing and ruminating) for he was going to bed.

At first, of course, the change did not appear to be very significant, even if there were some conspicuously unpleasant signs; if until now I had been able to proceed in the dark with total confidence because I felt the same, slightly slippery ground under my feet and, even without seeing anything, could hear the roar and crash of the waves from about the same distance, and feel about the same amount of salty spray on my skin, thus being free to enjoy the tempest as well as give myself over to my fantasizing and recollecting, all I had to do now was to make sure I stayed on course, not stray from the embankment, to accomplish which the sense of direction possessed by my feet proved sufficient, with a little help from the foamy waves; but then, while waiting for a fierce gust to subside, a wave struck me in the face — which in itself wouldn't have been too serious, because I didn't get all that much water down my neck and, though the water was certainly not warm, my coat wasn't soaked through either, and actually, it was all rather amusing, and if the wind hadn't kept me from opening my mouth, I probably would have laughed out loud — then at that very same instant I was struck again, harder this time, and that did make me lose confidence.

My guess was that until now I must have been walking in the middle of the embankment, but now, having waited in vain for the wind to subside, I edged toward its inner side, more protected from the sea, there to attempt to proceed, but the attempt failed, not only because the wind wouldn't let me and would have swept me away if I had given in to it, but also because after taking just a few steps in that direction I thought I had gotten to the edge of the embankment, with its sharp and extremely large stones; nothing to be done here, I realized — the embankment was narrower than I had thought, and it could not protect me from the waves — but even so, I did not do what might have been sensible in the circumstances: it didn't even occur to me to turn back, since I knew from the guidebook that even at high tide the water here rose only twelve centimeters, and that, I figured, could not be fatal, so I had simply reached a dangerous stretch, I told myself, the embankment probably curved here, that's why it was narrower, or for some reason dropped down, and if I just got past this dangerous bit, I would soon see the unfamiliar lights of Nienhagen and be safe again.

Suddenly the wind died down.

Still, I can't say I harbored any resentment toward Frau Kühnert; of course she wasn't talking so unbearably loudly because she was angry: even if our relationship had become unusually close over the last few weeks, I was always careful to maintain a proper distance, which, I believe, would have made it impossible for her to display so openly any feelings or emotions, if indeed she had them; the truth was, she couldn't speak quietly.

She seemed unaware of any intermediary tone between complete silence and unrestrained shouting, a unique trait — what else could it be called— that probably had as much to do with the tragic relationship between her and her husband, with whom she did not speak at all, as with the fact that she worked as a prompter in the Volkstheater, one of the most prestigious theaters in the city: in other words, she made her living by holding back an otherwise very pleasant, full-bodied, well-articulated voice, which nonetheless retained enough power to reach and be clearly understood in the farthest corners of the stage: no doubt about it, it was her voice that defined her life, and her ugliness was merely a rather comic addition, which I don't think she was fully aware of, since to her only her voice mattered, though she could seldom use it in its natural, normal range.

I myself had several occasions to witness how this voice could be the source of unpleasantness and how it could secure a very special place for its owner: we spent many a morning sitting next to each other on the raised platform built for the director in the theater's improbably vast rehearsal hall — it reminded one of a riding school or, better yet, an industrial assembly floor — and whenever a disagreement, a seemingly unresolvable situation, created tension and, trying to justify themselves, everyone began speaking at once, the noise level rose as rapidly as mercury in a thermometer when one has a high fever; adding to the noise, the bored stagehands, high-strung extras, wardrobe and lighting crew members were ready to use the chance to chat among themselves; at moments like these, Frau Kühnert was always the first to be admonished by some nervous actress: "Sieglinde, couldn't you say that louder?" or an overeager assistant director might tell her rudely to keep her mouth shut, this was not a kaffeeklatch, he had a good mind to throw her out.. and only then would he add what really mattered to everybody, that he wanted quiet, and Frau Kühnert's face would betray such genuine surprise, like that of a little boy who in blissful innocence has been playing with his weenie under the bushes and suddenly discovers that grownups find this activity most objectionable, and she would act as if this was happening to her for the very first time, as if nothing even remotely similar had ever happened before: her bulging eyes could not open wider, her profound embarrassment was betrayed by a girlish flush that abruptly darkened her complexion from neck to forehead, beads of perspiration would form above her mouth, which she'd wipe off cautiously, looking abashed; let's admit it — no one can get used to being continually attacked for something so basic to their makeup, and these irritable admonitions, these undeserved, rude words implied not only that her voice could be heard above the loudest din, representing and symbolizing it, as it were, but also that it carried explosive passion of such elemental force that it offended the ear, a voice that was embarrassing in all its unintended shamelessness, in a certain sense, the way it exposed people; she managed to embarrass me, too, in fact, when in the doorway she handed me the envelope as her skin turned crimson, for in view of our relationship nothing could account for either her blushing or her shouting.

But that was precisely the difficult thing to do: to escape from the effects of this apparently shameless and inexplicable intrusion, to evade it somehow; her very first sentence was much more than a simple announcement — true, however great the volume of her voice (and it did resound throughout the house), all she said was that I had gotten a telegram, but that one declarative sentence was punctuated by intense loud panting, giving the sentence many rhythmic thrusts, and because I couldn't easily remain indifferent to so much excitement, I naturally assumed the very emotional state she meant to pass on to me; no matter how hard I tried to control myself, no matter how dark it was in the stairway and foyer, she had to sense and see my agitation; with her hand still on the door handle, and tilting her head slightly to the side, she even smiled a little, which she could afford to do, because with her second sentence her voice changed and, not without irony, she pounced on me:

"But where the devil have you been so long, my dear sir?"

"Excuse me…?"

"It's been at least three hours since this telegram arrived. If you hadn't come home, I wouldn't have been able to sleep again."

"I was at the theater."

"In that case you should've been home an hour ago. Don't worry, I've figured it out."

"But what happened?"

"What happened? How should I know what's been happening with you. Will you come on in already!"

And when, wavering between indifference (how I yearned for it!), agitation, and fear, but determined to end the conversation, I could at last step into the hallway, Frau Kühnert closed the door behind me but, still staring at the envelope in my hand, wouldn't let me pass, and Professor Kühnert looked back before disappearing down the long corridor that led to their bedroom and nodded a greeting in my direction, which of course I couldn't return, partly because despite my effort to be demonstratively strong and aloof, I was preoccupied with the change taking place in Frau Kühnert's face and partly because he turned away, not really expecting me to return his greeting; I found nothing unusual in this, since he rarely acknowledged my presence; and not only did Frau Kühnert's facial expression go on changing with each passing moment but her entire bearing seemed to signal that she was preparing herself for a wholly new and to me unfamiliar outburst, not one from her usual repertory, and having breached all the old limits she now would not only reveal a new side of her character but also render me completely defenseless and, though I couldn't then have known it, would literally push me into a corner: with her lips trembling, she whipped off her glasses, which made her eyes look even more terrifying, then arched her back by pulling up her shoulders, as if she had sensed my straying glance of a moment ago and felt a need to protect her huge breasts; I made a last, desperate attempt to free myself, but it only made things worse: casting aside all pretense of politeness or good manners, I tried to slip away; I moved sideways, seeking the protection of the wall, but she simply stepped in front of me and pushed me up against it.

"Just what do you think you're doing, my dear sir? You think you can just come and go as you please and do your smutty little things, is that what you think? I haven't slept for days. I can't stand it anymore. And I don't want to! Who are you, anyway? What do you want here? And where do you get the nerve, after all these months, to pretend I'm nothing but air? Go on, tell me! It's not your fault I know everything about you; you can't help that, but nobody can expect me to keep my mouth shut forever. And I do know everything, everything, it's no use being so mysterious, I know all about you. But may I remind you, dear sir, that I'm a human being, too, and I want to hear it said, I want to hear it from your lips. I suffer because of you. I'm afraid to look at you. You had me fooled: I thought you were good and kind, but the truth is, you are cruel, horribly cruel, do you hear? I'd be most grateful if you people told me what you were up to. You want the police after me, is that it? Don't I have enough problems as it is, without you people? Yes, I want to know what's going on. You have some nerve to ask me what happened when it's I who want to know just what's going on, and what happened to him. The least you can do is tell me, so I can prepare myself for the worst. And don't act like I was your maid, who must take whatever you feel like dishing out. Did you have a mother? Do you still? Has anybody ever loved you? Do you really think we need the money you pay us? Your lousy money is just what I need. I thought I was taking in a good friend. But will you please tell me just what it is you do? What do you do besides ruin everybody, turn other people's lives upside down, is that what you occupy yourself with all day? Some occupation, I must say. But what is your occupation? When can I expect the police? Maybe you killed him. Well, did you? I wouldn't put it past you, so help me, you with your innocent blue eyes and polite little smile. Why, even now you act as if you didn't know anything and I was just a raving lunatic. Where did you bury him, huh? Now that I've found out about you, all I ask is that you get your things and get out. Go wherever you like. To a hotel. I am not running a criminals' hangout, you know. I don't want to get mixed up in anything. I've been scared long enough. When a telegram comes I get the shivers. When I hear the doorbell I get sick, do you understand? Haven't you noticed I'm an ill and tortured person who needs a little consideration? Didn't I confide in you, fool that I am, trust you enough, you of all people, to tell you my life story? And what about my goodness, my kindness, doesn't anybody want that? I'm asking you. Am I here only to be used by everybody? Why don't you answer me? As if I was some hole for everybody to toss their garbage in. Answer me, goddamn it! What's in that telegram?"

"But you've read it already! Haven't you?"

"Well, look at it."

"What do you want from me? That's what I'd like to know!"

We were standing quite close, and in the sudden silence, perhaps because of this closeness, her face seemed to relax, became almost translucently delicate, grew larger and even pretty in a sense, as if her irregular and ill-proportioned features had been held together only by the rigid frame of her glasses and her suppressed desires, and now that she had taken off her mask, her face was freed and regained its natural proportions; against her white skin the reddish freckles became more pronounced, decidedly charming, her thick lips seemed more expressive, her dense eyebrows more striking, and when she spoke again, much more softly than before, in her pleasantly penetrating prompter's voice, I surprised myself by thinking that, no matter how disheveled, distraught, and washed-out she might look, especially without her glasses, beauty might be nothing but the proximity of utter nakedness, the enthralling sensation of closeness; I wouldn't have been surprised if I had leaned over and unexpectedly kissed her on the lips, just so as not to see her eyes anymore.

"What could I possibly want from you, my dear sir? What do you think I would want? Could it be that I want to be loved, not a lot, just a very little? oh, not that way, don't get scared, though at first, yes, I was in love with you a little, you may have even felt it, and I can admit it now because it's over, but don't leave now, I don't want you to, you mustn't take seriously what I said before, it was silly, I take it back, you mustn't leave us; I do get scared, you see, please forgive me, but I am so very much alone and always fear that something unpredictable may happen, something dreadful, that some terrible disaster is approaching, so I don't want anything except that you read the telegram here, in front of me, because I'd like to know what happened, that's all I want you to tell me, nothing else. I didn't open it, you should know that. It came in an open envelope, that's how telegrams are delivered here. But please, look at it already, I beg of you!"

"But you did read it, didn't you?"

"Please look at it."

As it to emphasize her words, she placed her hand on my arm, a little above the wrist, so gently but at the same time so peremptorily that it seemed to mean that she would not only take back the envelope but also eliminate the tiny distance still remaining between us and in some way— the way itself being of no consequence in that millisecond — to possess me; she touched me, and I did not have the strength to resist, in fact was struggling with a little guilt of my own, knowing that the stray glance at her breast and the thought of possibly kissing her could not have left her unaffected, for there is no thought, however furtive, that in highly charged situations is not detected by the other person, and for a split second, therefore, it seemed entirely possible that our heated exchange might take an unexpected and dangerous turn, all the more so because not only could I not move or, by turning my head away, escape the gentle thrusts of her breath and her fixed stare, but also, against my will, I was becoming aware of the telltale signs of sexual excitement — so pleasurable but in the circumstances somewhat humiliating: mild tingling of the skin, dwindling lucidity of the mind, pressure in the groin, and faltering breath, all of which could have been the direct consequence of that one touch, occurring almost independently of me but in a very edifying way proving that seduction can completely bypass the conscious mind and need not even be physical or flattering, for most often physical desire is not the cause but the consequence of a relationship — just as ugliness from a certain distance may be seen as beauty — when tension has increased to a point where only sexual release can offer hope, and at such moments a single touch is enough to defuse the almost unbearable psychological tension or release it into sheer sensual pleasure.

''No, I won't look at it!"

Perhaps she did not exclude the possibility that I might strike her, because, hearing my somewhat delayed and rather hysterically shouted retort, she quickly withdrew her hand, as it was clear to her that my outburst, which must have seemed quite unusual, had less to do with the mysterious business of the telegram than with our immediate physical proximity, and not satisfied with removing her hand, she also stepped back a little, at the same time pushing her glasses up on her nose, and regarded me with a sudden look of blunt sobriety, as if nothing at all had happened between us.

"I see. There's no need to shout."

"Tomorrow I'll be going away for a few days."

"Where to, may I ask?"

"It would be helpful if I didn't have to take all my things with me. By next week I'll be gone for good."

"But where will you go?"

"Home."

"You'll be missed."

I started toward my room.

"You go ahead, I'll be here, waiting by your door; I can't sleep anyway, not if you won't tell me."

I closed my door behind me: raindrops were pattering on the windowsill, it was nice and warm in the room, and on the wall the feeble light from a streetlamp swayed in tune to the nodding, shiny branches of the maple trees, so I didn't turn on the light, I took off my coat and walked to the window, there to open the envelope: I could hear her, she was there all right, outside the door, waiting.

But here below, though the wind was less, the surging sea would not be tamed, and up above the wind kept howling and whistling; now and then the sky seemed to brighten just a little, as if the wind had ripped and dispersed the clouds covering the moon, but I imagine this was as much a sensory illusion as was my hope that I would soon be past the dangerous part of the embankment; I literally could not see a thing, a condition my eyes perceived as a state of emergency and rebelled against, conjuring up nonexistent lights to lull their disbelief, and, as if claiming their own independence, resented having to look, and also resented my forcing them to look, even though there was nothing for them to perceive, and so they not only devised rings of light and sparkling dots and rays but several times illuminated the entire seascape before me: as if through a large, narrow slit, I could see clouds rushing above the foamy, tempestuous sea and myself walking on the wave-pounded embankment, but in a moment everything would go dark again, and I had to realize that this vivid image had been sheer hallucination, since no natural light source could possibly account for it — it couldn't have been the moon, whose light was not present in these images; yet these dazzling internal visions, sources of a peculiar internal pleasure, made me believe that somehow I could still feel out the path ahead of me, though in fact there was no longer any trail, my feet kept getting caught on stones, I was stumbling and slipping.

I think by then I must have lost all sense of time and space, presumably because the capricious wind, the impenetrable darkness, and the rolling sea, lullingly rhythmical for all its stark grandeur, were like some narcotic numbing me. If I said I was all ears, I'd not be wholly wrong, since every other mode of sensory perception was now useless; like some odd nocturnal creature, I was dependent only on my hearing: I heard the rumble not of the waters or the earth but of the depths, and it was neither threatening nor impassive, and though it may sound much too romantic, I'd venture to claim it was the monotone murmur of infinity I heard issuing from the depths, a sound like no other, evoking nothing but the idea of the depths: where the depths lay, or the depths of what, was impossible to determine, since the sound was everywhere — on the surface of the water and in the air as much as at the bottom of the sea, seeming to fill out and dominate everything, so that everything became part of the deep until the sound itself became visible: a slowly rising boom, like the mighty effort of a vile mass rising up into motion somewhere at a great distance, ready to break free, to rebel against the fateful calm of this seemingly infinite rumbling, kept drawing closer and closer at a measured but forceful pace until suddenly it reached its own peak, sounding in a triumphantly thunderous blast that no longer allowed the depths to be heard; it rose above the depths, content, its goal achieved: it had defeated, for a brief moment obliterated, the depths; but in the very next moment all that apparent force, mass, surge, and victory crumbled away and with an unpleasant crackle disintegrated among the rocks on the beach, and the rumble of the deep could be heard once more as if nothing had ever challenged its rule; and the wind was there again, capricious and sinister, whispering, whistling, screeching; it would be hard for me to say when and how that subtle change came about; I perceived it not only inasmuch as the embankment was becoming narrower and the waves could therefore sweep right over it, but mostly in that I could acknowledge those rather striking environmental changes only long after they had occurred, and even then somewhat thoughtlessly, as if they had nothing to do with me, as if I were hardly concerned that my shoes and pants were sopping wet and my coat was less and less water-resistant; I yielded so readily to the sounds of darkness that even the fantasizing and recollecting, with which I had kept myself amused at the beginning of my walk, were now gradually dissolving into these sounds; what we might call self-preservation was thus functioning only in a limited capacity, as when someone waking from a nightmare keeps kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, instead of reminding himself of the moment just before he fell asleep and of the fact that what he is being forced to experience so painfully is real only in a dream, and he cannot remind himself, precisely because he is dreaming; similarly, I was trying to protect myself, but the means were dictated by the given situation: what was the use of hiding among the rocks, groping helplessly, stumbling and sliding, the water found me there too, and it never occurred to me that what had started out as a pleasant evening stroll had ceased to be that quite some time ago.

Then something touched my face.

It was just as dark as before and the silence came to an end, something I could not really account for came to an end, and when that something touched my face again, I realized it was water, cold but not unpleasant, and I knew this should remind me of something, but I couldn't, simply couldn't remember what it was, even though I heard, once again I was beginning to hear its sounds, so some time must have elapsed since I had last heard it, but despite this it was still dark, nighttime, and everything was wet; and indeed, it was dark.

And at last I understood that I was lying among the rocks.

Sitting in God's Hand

But then Helene's appearance solved everything, or at least for a few wonderful moments our future, thought to be so ominous, seemed to turn captivatingly bright again.

The next morning I was standing in front of my desk, unwashed, unshaven, undressed, lost in thought, absently scratching my stubbly chin, unable to begin what in the end would turn out to be a fateful day; also, I was filled with tension, because the night before, after the exhausting round of farewell visits, I had fallen into a deep, dull, dreamless sleep and slept so late one might have thought that all was well, but this coma-like sleep had been the direct consequence of my latest lies, my constrained acquiescence in the intractability of my life, and after awaking, my conscience, slightly more relaxed, rested, and tentative, was returning ever more forcefully and disquietingly to its familiar haunts, and by then I was also in the grip of wanderlust, of a thrilling anticipation that makes you believe that by merely changing locale you can put behind you all that is tiresome, unpleasant, depressing, or insoluble; my luggage had already been put out in the entrance hall, waiting to be picked up by a porter; all I had left to do was to gather the notes and books I'd need for my work and slip them into the black patent-leather case that lay open in the middle of the room, on the carpet, but since my train wasn't leaving until late that afternoon, I had plenty of time for this critical last-minute chore, which, for various reasons, caused me no little anxiety; and to avoid accumulating more unpleasant feelings, I tried not to concentrate on the task at hand and let my thoughts wander aimlessly; while waiting and dawdling, I heard the distinctive knock of my landlady, good old Frau Hühner, whose habit it was not to wait for permission to enter but to barge right in; I could consider it a great feat of education that she no longer burst in without knocking when she had something urgent to tell me, for I had been unable simply to make her understand that, even if she was my landlady, it was customary not only to knock but also to wait for a reply before entering. "But what could the gentleman be doing when I know for sure that you are alone?" she had said, rolling her eyes in exasperation and smoothing the apron on her distended belly, the first time I put this request to her, in my politest manner too; but she proved to be otherwise such a helpful and kind person that, though utterly incapable of learning something even this trifling, she amused rather than annoyed me with her habit, but now the noise she made could in no way be called knocking, for she was pounding with her fists, and the door was torn open as if by a blast of wind: "A young lady is here, wearing a veil, and she is asking for you, the young lady is," she whispered breathlessly, and spacious as the outside hallway may have been, the visitor must also have heard her, because needless to say Frau Hübner failed to close the door behind her; "A young lady is here, and I think she is the gentleman's fiancée."

"Please show her in, Frau Hübner," I said stiffly, a bit louder than necessary, trying to make amends for her rudeness and hoping that the guest waiting in the hallway would hear these more polite words, although my appearance and dress at the moment made me totally unfit to receive a guest, least of all a lady; I couldn't imagine who this inappropriately early visitor might be, but soon thought of several disturbing possibilities: for a moment it even occurred to me (maybe that is why I didn't rush out to see for myself) that it was an emissary of my dearest friend turned deadliest enemy, here to carry out the promise to annihilate me, hiding a pistol in her fine fur muff—"Even fashion is on our side," my friend had said to me laughingly when women began wearing muffs, which did indeed increase opportunities for criminal activity, and I knew for a fact he was surrounded by so many loose women that it could have been easy enough to find one who'd do anything for him; maybe my visitor wasn't even a woman but one of his assistants dressed as a woman — and none of these assumptions could be so fanciful as to be untrue, because, knowing as I did all the means at his disposal, I couldn't help taking seriously my friend Claus Diestenweg's carefully considered promise, couldn't simply shrug it off, if only because from his standpoint I was in possession of discomfiting, incriminating evidence and thus a potential traitor to his cause: "You must die. We'll bide our time and come for you when the moment is ripe," he wrote in a letter not penned by his own hand, but what should have surprised me more was why he hadn't yet acted on his threat, why he'd decided to do it now, though it did occur to me that this uncertain reprieve might have been part of the punishment, which he meant to impose only after he had first allayed my fears and suspicions and made me believe he had finally let me go; I was like a hunted animal, hoping to escape by darting from the open field into the forest, not noticing the gun barrels concealed in the foliage; no wonder, then, that the beast too is perplexed, why is this happening now, on this peaceful autumn morning; the lack of suspicion is what makes this death terrible, for in different circumstances the end may have been accepted with equanimity; for several months I had also felt shielded by foliage, no longer so defenseless, and by changing addresses several times I hoped that finally I was beyond his dreaded reach and that in due course he would forget about me; indeed, after a time, the messages and letters stopped coming, and getting engaged not only had afforded me emotional relief but also enabled me to return to that sensible and civilized way of life I had broken away from for a few years, mainly because of my passionate attachment to Diestenweg; at the moment I had to grasp the back of my armchair to support myself against the impact of a single, unexpected, and dizzying thought: words said out loud can never be taken back — but then, I had no real desire to take anything back, because I didn't feel like pretending my past didn't belong to me; if I must die, I must, so be it, let it come, but let it come now, quickly, I'm ready; but nothing happened, and Frau Hübner didn't make a move either, as if she'd not only sensed but was actually experiencing the fear that had suddenly seized me; she stood petrified under the gently curving arch separating my room from the always dim hallway.

"My dear Frau Hübner, let's not keep the lady waiting, please, do show her in" — I repeated my request, more softly but more emphatically, evincing a presence of mind that came as a surprise even to me, and in spite of that fleeting terror, I managed to remain cool and objective, my voice keeping the required dignity; I felt what I was going through was nobody's business: but I could see it was hopeless, and for some incomprehensible reason, the unusual situation so paralyzed Frau Hübner that, though she had had ample opportunity to learn it from me, she couldn't perform the simple ceremony of showing the guest in and behaved as if the gun was really pointed at her; quickly pulling my robe together and, like one resolved to face whatever awaited him, I turned without delay to welcome my guest, whoever she might be.

In spite of this resolve, stepping from the sunlit room into the hallway's pleasant dimness, whence I could see the entrance hall through the open door, I had to stop and cry out, "Is it really you, Helene?" for seeing her in this drab, almost wretched, though for me more or less natural setting, suddenly made my poor landlady's stupefaction not only understandable but almost palpable, as if I'd gone through the same experiences as this hapless widow, who had not had many opportunities to behold such visions — for that's how Helene appeared, standing in the hall, like a vision, and in these dreary surroundings it seemed that even I couldn't have had much to do with such an affluent, angelically pure, exquisite yet fallible human being; she was wearing a silver-gray dress trimmed with lace which I hadn't seen before and which, according to the fashion of the day, most artfully concealed and at the same time cunningly emphasized her body's slim and shapely features, carefully not highlighting one to the detriment of another, which would have made her indecently conspicuous — the effect was created by the totality, whose excessive artificiality was offset by the naturalness of the underplayed details. She was standing with her head slightly bowed, a posture that immediately brought to mind those afternoons when she'd sat at the piano or leaned over the embroidery hoop, and her neck, emerging in startling nakedness from the high, closed collar of her dress, was made to appear acceptably chaste and covered simply by stray curly ringlets escaping from a carefully combed bun of hair gathered up at the back; yet she appeared more exciting now, and not only because the deep crimson ringlets accentuated the bareness of her neck — what fires our imagination is never mere nakedness, which only evokes a feeling of vulnerability, painful defenselessness, but everything that is almost covered or barely concealed, urging us, by its very suggestiveness, to lay it bare, implying always that we and only we are entitled to view and touch such a vulnerable body, that only to us does it surrender its nakedness, for only a mutual thrill of discovery and possession makes it possible to tolerate, indeed enjoy, whatever is coarsely natural; although I could not see her face — the huge rim of her hat cast a shadow over it and she hadn't lifted her veil — I could sense her embarrassment, and I was thoroughly embarrassed myself, partly because the surprise was simply too great, and partly because I was overwhelmed by the unexpected joy that rapidly replaced my initial fright; I knew I should speak first, sparing her the further embarrassment of having to talk in front of strangers, for in the meantime two uncombed, pale-faced young girls, Frau Hübner's granddaughter and a friend, had stuck their heads through the slightly open kitchen door and with utter amazement were gaping at the tableau presented by Helene, a tableau in which they, too, were now involuntary participants, yet I could not bring myself to speak, for whatever I might have said would have been too obviously intimate and emotional for utterance in public, so I could only extend my arm toward her, whereupon she grasped her long-handled, pointed umbrella with one gloved hand, lifted her train with the other, and, gliding almost silently, began to move toward me; "What's come over you, my dear?" I said — it may have sounded like a stifled cry — after I finally managed to dislodge Frau Hübner from her spot, and having closed the door, we were left to ourselves under the arch between my room and the dim hallway, "or is there something wrong? What happened? Speak to me, Helene, I'm most anxious to hear!"

But she took her time answering; we were standing very close, facing each other, the silence was becoming too long, I felt like tearing the veil off her hat, just tearing it off, and tearing off the hat, too, that so annoyingly covered her face; I wanted to see her face, ascertain the reason for her unexpected visit, though I had a fairly good idea; or perhaps what I really wanted was to tear the clothes off her body, to stop her from being so ridiculously alien to me; but as my excitement was aroused further by seeing her whole body tremble, I simply couldn't make a move that might seem common or coarse, didn't dare touch that blasted hat, because I wanted to spare her; "I know, I know very well I shouldn't have done this," she whispered from behind her veil, and in our excitement we nearly brushed against each other, though both she and I made sure we didn't, "still, I couldn't make myself not come, it will take only a moment, my carriage is waiting downstairs, and I'd be so ashamed if I told you my true reason for coming! It's your eyes I wanted to see, Thomas, your eyes, and now that I've said it, I no longer feel ashamed; because last night, after you left, I couldn't remember your eyes; please don't turn away, and don't despise me for asking, do look at me; now I can see your eyes, good; all last night I couldn't remember them."

"But you seemed to understand what I tried to tell you."

"Oh, please, don't misunderstand me! I knew you would misunderstand. I don't want to hold you back. Go."

"But now how could I?"

"Now you will feel even better about going."

"Why are you being so cruel to me?"

"Let's not say anything, then."

"You are driving me insane. I am madly in love with you, Helene, now more than ever before, which makes me feel I haven't loved you enough, but now, by saying what you've said, by coming here, you are driving me out of my mind, and I can't express myself; I am being ridiculous, but you should know that you are saving my life, though that's not why I love you; and I'd really like to destroy all my notes, rip up all my books."

"Be quiet."

"I can't be quiet, but I can't find anything to say, either. With my teeth I'll rip apart all my writing, all my papers."

"All I wanted was to see your eyes and say your name, Thomas; I must always say your name; now that I have, I can go, and you should, too."

"Don't go."

"I must."

"My dearest."

"We must be reasonable."

"I'd like to see your hair. Your neck. I'm going to sink my fingers into your hair, grab you by your hair and pull so hard you'll scream."

"Do be quiet."

"I'm going to kill you." And this last sentence, uttered as she whipped off her hat and veil, came out with such conviction that my voice, hoarse with excitement, actually deepened, for those words, said in total ecstasy, seemed to hit upon the secret wish, the well-concealed desire, the very emotion that until then I'd been unaware of yet did not seem so new, after all; it was as if I had felt this wish all along, that and nothing else, as if all my endeavors had been fueled by the desire to kill her, and for this reason the sentence itself, and the emphasis I'd given it, sounded startlingly honest; though coming from me — especially since I who, let's not mince words, was the son of a murderer, a common ravisher — the sentence could not have sounded entirely innocuous, could not have been considered an empty phrase of love, at least not by me, for after a long and troublesome period of my life, I had experienced for the first time, in my own fingers, the urge that would explain to me Father's hitherto inexplicable and abhorrent deed; yes, it was like a new insight, unexpected and none too pleasant, felt for a mere fraction of a second, during which I could almost step outside myself and contemplate my own profoundest desires, which were similar to what Father in his time had acted on; this was like the shattering discovery that a tree's roots exposed to the light of day reflect the impressive shape of its leafy crown; at this moment I was very much in love with the creature standing before me and trembling helplessly; I felt I was quite beyond those carnal desires that entice our loftier sentiments with the promise of temporary gratification, or, I should say, I thought I was beyond them, if only because in the circumstances, until our wedding day, I knew I was not even to think about such things, I was to put them out of my mind, but just the same, I would have loved to wrap my fingers around her neck and tighten them until I squeezed every last breath out of this long-admired neck.

Except that in that sentence she could not discern her fate — just as Mother could not discern hers on that certain afternoon long ago — and therefore did not think she ought to take seriously what was in fact serious; if anything, the earnest resolve Helene may have sensed in my voice only served to intensify her fervor: "Here I am, take me," she whispered in reply, and laughed; and it was like seeing her for the first time, her lips were so full and moist and ripe; "You dirty little slut," I whispered back into her mouth, before touching it with my tongue; I was somewhat bothered by not having performed my morning toilette, I hadn't even rinsed my mouth, but I kept it up: "You little bitch, you whore, you dare talk like this before our wedding?" and I laughed with her, too, for these words, uttered not quite involuntarily, did not seem to surprise or scandalize her, and though my breath may have been unpleasant, it proved to be another source of pleasure, she now fully opened her mouth into mine, and I derived not just physical pleasure but a terrific mental satisfaction from hearing these coarse words, as if I were stepping over my father's body, daring to say out loud what he had so tragically suppressed.

It was such a joy, certainly one of the greatest joys I have ever experienced, for though I was grasping her neck with both hands (when and how they got there I couldn't tell), the fear, feeding on uncanny resemblances and echoes, as well as hate and anger implicit in our relationship, which induced so much shame and guilt and prevented me from enjoying the moment at hand, always reminding me of something old and familiar — all these feelings simply vanished, disappeared without a trace; I wanted simply to devour that lovely mouth and have that mouth engulf my body with its kisses. I did not dare hold her tight, because my light robe and silk pajamas would not keep down my powerful erection; my hands became an instrument of tenderness whose sole aim was to nestle her head in the gentlest, most comfortable position possible; her mouth transformed the force of my hatred into that of possession; fingers no longer wanted to squeeze and choke but to raise up, to make it easy for her to kiss and to explore with her tongue; though my consciousness tried to maintain control over itself, I couldn't say just when I closed my eyes or when she wrapped her arms around my neck, as if two dark orbs were flowing, sliding wetly into each other; still, a vestige of fear ran through me, attributable perhaps more to jealousy, since I didn't understand how she could kiss like an experienced lover, and at the same time I sensed that this was not experience at all but what she was giving me was the purest of instincts, and her purity affected me more than any experience possibly could; I was the one who, relying on my experience in love, wouldn't allow myself to yield to her fully; cunningly, and with a certain superiority, I merely tolerated her explorations and advances without really kissing her back; by unexpectedly and deliberately delaying my responses, by surprising her lips and her teeth with the tip of my tongue, or by actually obstructing the path of her tongue, I was enjoying her confusion and arousing further her desire for us to merge into one; what I really wanted was for her to abandon the last retreats of her modesty and shame and be totally at my mercy, which we both needed then — all the more so because the sober part of my consciousness had to realize that neither of us could stop or delay the chain of events without some risk; we would have to cope with the lengthy, intricate act of undressing, which would require all the reserves of skill and delicacy I still possessed, and the embarrassment of fumbling with buttons and strings and hooks would become a delicious new source of pleasure, a titillating memory only later, after the two naked bodies had already become one.

I may have planned out my every move, skillfully, sensibly, but there came a moment when I lost all my good sense, and now that I'm long past such matters and try to recall the events of that sunny morning with the detachment of an analyst observing his own activities, I realize that at this very juncture I run into the impassable barriers to free expression and have to crack that stone wall with my skull; and it's by no means modesty alone, obligatory and thus in many ways quite laughable, that makes my undertaking questionable: though it's not easy to call by their name the things that in daily life have their overused and hackneyed appellations, these words, denoting certain organs, functions, and motions, for all their spicy, down-to-earth vitality and expressiveness, cannot be used to describe my experiences, and not because I'd be afraid to transgress against bourgeois propriety — I couldn't care less about that; my task here is to give an account of my life, and middle-class decorum can be only the framework for such a life; if for this final reckoning I wish to chart as precisely as possible the map of my life's emotional events, then I should be able to spread out before me my own body, and no amount of squeamishness should hold me back from scrutinizing it in all its nakedness, just as it would be ludicrous to tell the coroner not to remove the sheet covering the body on his table; in other words, I should be able to remove my robe and pajamas and her fussily beautiful dress here and now, just as I did then and there, while naming every gesture and emotion in the process; but after some reflection, I must say that to use common words to describe the so-called immodest parts of the body — and, since we are talking about a living body and its quite natural functions — would be as ridiculous and false as it would be to change the subject politely; to demonstrate the true dimensions of the problem and the difficulty of finding a solution, if I were to ask myself the question as a kind of test: "So tell me, my dear, on that sunny morning, did you finally fuck your fiancée?" I could answer in the affirmative, but that would be no less a deceptive oversimplification or generalization as it would be to say nothing, because this word of affirmation would help to gloss over crucial details, just as silence would; yet narcissistic curiosity, interested only in details concealed and deemed unworthy of attention, finds it difficult to form a clear picture of its object, which is itself, because the body loses self-awareness precisely at those moments when it could be most revealing; consequently, memory cannot retain what the body had not been aware of, allowing crucial gestures to slip away, though it also endows them with a very special air, as the memory of a fainting spell can preserve only the curious sensations of losing and then regaining consciousness while the fainting itself, most intriguing to us, for it's a state like no other, remains inaccessible, unknowable.

Helene simply enclosed my lips with a bite, and this final decisive act, the only possible response to my little game of studied aloofness, luckily blurred the last sober bit of my consciousness, or so I believe now, after the fact, yes, I believe that the pain caused by this bite was the last sensation whose meaning and significance I could still register with some clarity, and which later enabled me to slip into a now barely remembered state of oblivion, for not only had her mouth abandoned all shyness and reticence by then, it also let me know in no uncertain terms that she wanted me, all of me, and would stand for no more delay or fuss, so it made no sense for me to play the seducer highly skilled in the techniques of love; she wanted me just as I was, she clung to me and would have me forget how I thought I should behave, all she wanted was to press her hips to mine, and not even the formidable layers of lace and silk undergarments could prevent us from feeling each other's body heat— although that, while making me very happy, strangely enough also aroused in me a feeling of humiliation, for by seeming to take control of our fate and by proving that my tongue's predictably unpredictable games were clumsy experiments compared to the eloquent testimony of her teeth, she may have cast doubt on my manhood or anyway deliberately offended my male vanity; as if exchanging roles, she became manfully aggressive, which of course I enjoyed very much, though in light of her decisiveness I appeared to myself as girlishly teasing and flirtatious and thus had to overpower her; my instincts, my conditioning refused to accept the exchange, and perhaps the deeply unconscious motive behind that bite was to arouse in me this wish to reassert myself; even my hatred returned, I felt like snatching her off me as one tears leeches off one's body; I grabbed her hair, the soft material of her dress, maybe even grazed her skin, and with a single jerk of my head I withdrew my mouth from hers; reaching lower with my hand, I grasped her buttocks and thrust her groin brutally against mine, letting her know in the most indelicate possible manner what I had been concealing in my pajama pants, under my robe; with lips and teeth, with bites of my own, I was now ready to take possession of her mouth, pushing in my tongue unimpeded, to which she responded, already on the floor, most tenderly, with even hand strokes and caresses of her tongue — I have no idea how we ended up on the floor, for by then I seemed to have lost the thread of our story, and perhaps this is the juncture after which only her gestures, features, the taste of her saliva, the smell of her perspiration, and the look of her fluttering eyelids allow me to surmise what might have happened to me.

She was lying on her back on the bare floor and I, propped on one elbow and bent over her, watched her closed eyelids, her almost motionless face, while my body was racked by deep, inexplicable, tearless sobs.

I sank my free hand into the red hair spread out before me, and almost as if the hand wanted to remind itself of that old, that very old promise, I began to pull her hair, actually pulling her closer to me by the hair; her face slid almost lifelessly on the floor.

This sobbing was like the memory of a childhood sickness, torrid, shivery, blurred, and it was as if we had been in the deepest of deep darkness and then stumbled upon a sunlit clearing, this room, where familiar yet strange-looking furniture stood silently about, and the heavy rug bunched up by our feet made a high mountain, and every wrinkle and pattern on the wallpaper remained unbearably still; this glaring, empty sight irritated me so much that I had to lay my head on her chest, carefully of course, it was the first time I'd touched her body; I had to close my eyes so that, feeling my own hot breath in the white ruffles of her dress already burning with her body heat, my tremulous sobs could take me back to the darkness from which I had been torn by this silence.

But she seemed to ignore my crying, made no attempt to console me— maybe I killed her, I thought then.

Among the ruffles and lace my lips eventually found her neck, and then I had to open my eyes again; I treasure even now the color of her skin and the smoothness that my mouth and tongue could also feel, for the silence in us might have been very deep, but my mouth, like a foreign body, like a slowly advancing snail, wanted to taste everything it had been forced to abstain from until then; that's why I had to open my eyes again, for though I could take in the sensation of her skin, it might be of some help if I could also see what I had so fervently desired and yet could not make my own, even if this would not compensate for the lost moments.

"I'd like to tell you something," I heard her whisper, and with my mouth I began to move toward her lips, to make her not say but breathe her words into me; I was in no hurry — with my teeth I first caught her sweet, pointed chin, so nice to hold, so firm I could easily bite into it and, like a dog offered a finer bone than the one already in its mouth, I was terribly confused by the choices before me, but her mouth was waiting, and that decided my course of action, though by then my eyes must have closed again, because all I remember is that I got a whiff of her breath along with her words: "Please undress me."

In the meantime, we had left my sobs somewhere behind; again something was lost forever.

Her voice must have brought me back to my senses, things began to clear, because I remember being amazed, not at what she had asked me to do but at her voice; she uttered those words so naturally — those words being the extent of her consolation — that I couldn't imagine her asking me to do anything else. Still, this voice wasn't the voice of a grown woman; it was as if unwittingly she had regressed to a time whose allure I'd also felt while sobbing just moments earlier, and by doing that she seemed to be making me a gift of that unknown time, wrenched from her own past, the same gift I had offered to her with my own, childlike tears. Thus, it wasn't amazement I felt at that moment, or not only amazement but wonderment, and admiration for her little-girl state, for the sublime quality inherent in our nature that enables one human being to bestow on another an experience rooted in times long gone.

And this odd, childlike, timelessly deep and lightsome state, unique perhaps because we had become vehicles of the tension between an indistinct past and an uncertain future, not only held us in its grace while we rather ceremoniously undressed each other but extended its spell — deepened by the gestures of mutual intimacy and trust — to the time when, half-lying, half-sitting among the ridiculous piles of our scattered clothes, we finally laid eyes on each other's naked body.

I was looking at her, but at the same time I also stole cautious, stealthy glances at myself, noting with some stupefaction what I had already felt quite clearly, namely that my member, so firm and rigid in its demand for a place of its own only moments before, was now shrunk to its smallest size and was lying on my thigh with infantine disinterest; though I tried hard to steal a glance at my body, she noticed the furtive look, for unlike me, she held her torso and head quite erect and stared at nothing but my eyes, as if trying consciously to avoid having to look at her body or at mine; we were holding each other's hand, and I had the feeling it wasn't her girlish modesty that made her so shy; she was trying, as I had done while undressing her, not to be distracted by details: when I undid the hooks concealed in the lace-trimmed folds in the back of her dress, loosened the strings of her corset, pulled off her pearl-studded, fine leather shoes and pink knickers decorated with tiny bows, and her cleverly fastened long silk stockings, when, in brief, concentrating on those little hooks and buttons and strings and knots, I purposely refrained from taking in piecemeal the hitherto unknown regions of her body unfolding before me, for I wanted it in its entirety, to contemplate her whole body undisturbed; yet now, when all her naked body was revealed to me, it seemed too much for my eyes to encompass, too beautiful to absorb; I had to look everywhere, everywhere at once, and at the same time I would have liked my eyes to rest on one particular part of her, to find a single place on her body that might be unique; and perhaps she was right (if one may speak in terms of right and wrong in such a case) in looking only at my eyes, for as sentimental as this may sound, there was more complete nakedness reflected in her beclouded blue eyes than her skin was able to offer; and that is as it should be, since the shapes and curves of the body, under the even coating of our skin, can communicate to us something of themselves only through the language of the eyes.

I am equally unable to explain just how we ended up in that peculiar position, for I cannot claim to have been conscious enough rationally to guide my movements; even the scraps of memory, the thought fragments flitting through my mind, annoyed rather than comforted me, as did the sudden realization that Frau Hübner might still be eavesdropping at the door and the coachman was still waiting on the street, at this moment giving feedbags to the horses; and I was troubled also by the fleeting reminder that Helene was so impossibly young, not yet nineteen, and if she yielded to me now, and if I likewise failed to restrain myself, then I, too, would have to give myself over to her; and at that moment I suddenly became conscious of all the difficulties of our possible life together were I to be the first to expose, if only for an instant, her dark and dormant senses to the light and that were to become the only bond between us; it was as if I was facing a helpless puppet with no existence of its own, whom I would have to bring to life so that it could ruin mine; and precisely because this act would be the only, albeit the deepest, bond between us, I should not do it; no, I mustn't lose my freedom, for if I did, I'd end up killing her; I also had to think of my exciting little adventure the night before, which, though inconclusive, hinted that my own senses might take me in directions she couldn't be expected to comprehend and where she certainly couldn't follow; thus I was liable to expose her, and myself, to the gravest of dangers, except that as we sat on the floor, naked, in need of each other, holding each other's hand, I did not feel rushed, I simply longed to pass over each and every part of her, see her in full, take in everything she had ever been and would become with me, and I knew she was mine; so those portentous thought fragments only served to strengthen my desire — there was still something between us, then, that needed to be conquered — and she must have felt the same way, that's why her glance did not stray to my body; like one who has just received a gift but is not yet sure it's really hers, she was very tense, though we seemed most relaxed there, on the floor, our positions somewhere between sitting and squatting. She pulled one leg under her, and with the other, which she bent at the knee so that it almost touched her nipple, she supported herself, laying her groin wide-open; locks of her massive hair fell on her little-girlish, fragile shoulders, and under the lighter red triangle of her pubic hair the lips of her vulva parted softly; and when I stole a glance at myself, catching sight of my own genitals resting softly on my thigh, I might as well have been Pan resting in the woods, on dewy grass; but more significant than this was that I was sitting in exactly the same position as she: one leg under me and supporting myself with the other; we were mirror images of each other; and her waist and breast were similar somehow, the sloping line of her breast bearing a striking resemblance to the curvature of her waist, as if the two curves were obeying creation's selfsame command.

Almost simultaneously, we began crawling toward each other on the floor, our hands proving to be of great help, she pulled me and I pulled her. However solemn and meaningful the moment may have appeared, the simultaneity of our desire to move could not but strike us as amusing; by then my eyes had located the reassuring focal points of her lovely body, though these were not isolated, single points, or some totality of what I was seeing; somehow I perceived her breasts, her waist, and her open vulva all at once, and I could afford to pick out these details from the whole because as I coolly surveyed the whole I could be certain I would not be disappointed, I was getting exactly what I had wished for, her dress had not deceived me: a perfect body came into my possession, and almost as if the attraction of those remaining, still distant points of her body had made me move, I began to laugh out loud, and heard as well as saw that she, too, had burst into laughter, so we actually began to laugh at the same time; and the fact that we both knew that we both had had the same thought, and found our simultaneous move and laugh comical, made this laughter so loud that it turned into an unrestrained roar, yes, we were roaring, I can still hear it, as if, with our gales of laughter, a huge wave of some irresistible force was crashing down on us. When my mouth was above her breasts I hesitated for an instant, catching a glimpse of her ripely glistening gums, because I couldn't decide which one I desired more, I may have wanted both, and the laughter shaking my whole body now reminded me somehow of my sobs of a moment ago; I placed my palm on her vagina, my fingers ready gently to penetrate the adored lips of her flesh, into softness, into wetness, into the depths; on my back and shoulders I felt her hair spreading over me like a tent; and perhaps the back of my neck was the spot she had been looking for, because as I carefully took her hardened nipple into my lips, she pressed her lips to my neck and also put her hand between my thighs; and now all at once it was quiet; as I recall this now, I cannot but think that then, there in that room, we must have been sitting in God's hand.

Slowly the Pain Returned

And now here I was again, standing in our hallway, perhaps at the very same time of the day, catching sight in the mirror of a coat hanging on the rack.

Looking at it like this, in the dim light, reflected in the mirror, I couldn't tell what color the coat was, only that it was made of a heavy, coarse material, the kind that repels water but attracts every bit of lint and fuzz.

Water was gushing and gurgling through the gutters on the eaves, on the steep rooftops snow was thawing, turning to slush, and there I was, schoolbag in hand, standing in front of the mirror.

Maybe it was navy blue, an old, mustered-out military overcoat with a single gold button under its wide collar, which mysteriously remained while all the other buttons had clearly been replaced.

And perhaps it was that gold button sparkling on the dark coat that made me think of him, again of him, as he was walking toward me across that snow-patched clearing, and the painful mood of that moment touched me once more; it was the same hour, and then, too, I'd been standing like this in our hallway and had not the slightest hope that the pain I felt for him and because of him would ever pass; I kept looking at myself in the mirror and believed that everything, everything, would forever stay the same, and indeed nothing really changed: the snow had been melting then, just as it was now, and to avoid having to walk home with him, I again took the route through the woods and, just as then, my shoes got soaking wet; I seemed to be hearing the very same sounds from the dining room, the sounds I heard then and always: against the background of clattering and clinking dishes, the annoying silly squeals of my little sister, my grandmother's voice, untiringly chiding and regularly interrupted by Grandfather's good-natured growls — sounds so familiar that one understands them without really hearing, without paying attention; it must have been this multitude of similar occurrences that made it seem that there was no difference between then and now; slowly the pain returned, but it was that strange and unfamiliar coat on the rack that suggested that I wasn't standing here then but now, after all, though it also evoked the futility of my struggle against the love I had for him, which I always hoped would pass, and if it wasn't then but now, perhaps this, too, would somehow also pass.

But Mother was still lying in her bed the way she always had, her head sunk into large white pillows, apparently asleep as always, opening her eyes only when someone entered the room.

And this time, too, I headed first for her room, just as I'd been doing ever since that day — where else could I have gone?

But back then, the first time, I had done so quite unintentionally— doltishly raw instincts led me there, I'd say; until then I'd always have my lunch before visiting Mother, and only from that day on did it become my habit to sit on the edge of her bed and hold her hand, waiting until my little sister was fed and the dishes cleared away before stepping into the dining room, so that I'd find only one setting on the table, mine, and I'd be alone, spared the sight of my sister, which was more and more burdensome, for what had seemed natural or nearly natural before was now turning repulsive: I hear myself saying "before" and "now," involuntarily dividing time into periods before and after the kiss, for that kiss, I now realize, caused fundamental changes in many aspects of my existence, ordering my affinities into a different sort of naturalness, but at the time whom else could I have turned to if not to my mother? the pain I felt over Krisztián stemmed not only from his inability or unwillingness to return my secret affections but mostly from the fact that these emotions and longings had inescapable physical manifestations — in my muscles, my mouth, fingertips, and, let's admit it, also the pressure in my groin, for is there an instinct stronger than the one to touch, to feel, to smell, and even to possess what can be touched, caressed, and smelled, possessed with one's mouth, devoured? but all these desires to touch I had to consider as unnatural, something peculiar to me, which separated me from others, isolated and branded me, even if nothing would have been more natural to my own body, which I alone could feel; I had to be ashamed of that kiss and of the desire to kiss; however subtly, he had managed to communicate this to me, once he could distance himself from me and, to a certain extent, from his own true impulses; because for a moment something did erupt from the deep, but it had to be suppressed, and he did suppress it; it had to be concealed, and he concealed it, even from himself, whereas I kept recalling it, relentlessly, obsessively; one might say I lived by it, but how could imagination satisfy the palpable desires of the body? and aside from Mother, who else was there around me whom I could touch and feel and kiss and smell as freely as I would have liked to kiss him?

At the same time, whenever I had to look at this hideous countenance, my little sister's face, I had to sense, especially after that kiss, that no amount of medication, administered in carefully measured doses, would ever alter it; the usual family explanation about hormonal imbalance could be nothing but a merciful deception, deceiving only ourselves, for what she had was not some cold, not even a sickness, just as I wasn't suffering from a sickness, we both were what we were; and she seemed unaware, luckily perhaps, of her abnormality — she was happy and carefree, yielding to every momentary stimulus, so to be able to love her, I should have accepted all this as most natural, but to do that would have been equal to holding up a mirror to my own nature, suspect of being somehow abnormal, confirming that it was indeed abnormal, deformed; I'd have to acknowledge it, and then there would be no turning back, all the more so since my little sister's face, for all its deformity, also carried our family features, she was a living caricature of us — impossible not to notice — and although I wasn't prepared to go on lying about it, neither could I any longer suppress my revulsion and fear.

If I looked at my little sister long enough — and I had ample opportunity to do so, for sometimes I was forced to spend endless hours with her — I sensed in her a kind of primeval patience coupled with an animal's docility: no matter what game I'd invent for her, no matter how simple-minded — it didn't have to be more than the repetition of a single gesture — she would, in Grandmother's words, "get on with it very nicely"; she had the capacity to enjoy the recurrent element in things repeated without being bored, she enclosed herself within the circle of repetitions, or to be more precise, she shut herself out of her own game, acting as if she were a windup doll, and nothing could then disturb her and I could observe her well: for example, we got under a couple of dining-room chairs and I would roll a colored marble across the floor so that she would have to catch it in the opening formed by the chair legs and then roll it back the same way; this became one of her favorite games and I also came to prefer it, partly because following the marble's path absorbed all her attention and, since it wasn't too hard to catch the marble, she could go on squealing to her heart's content, and also because all I had to do was repeat mechanically the same gesture: I was there, playing with her, doing what was expected of me, yet if I wanted to I could cut myself loose, pretend I wasn't there, retreat to more pleasant, imagined landscapes or events, possibly escape into coarser fantasies; or I could do just the reverse — turn my full attention to her but observe only the phenomenon, not her, identify with her, drink her into myself, feel in her distorted features my own, recognize my own helplessness in her persistent, obdurate clumsiness, and I could do this with cold detachment, from the outside, free of emotional involvement, yet also enjoy this cold scrutiny, toy with the thought of being a scientist observing a worm so as to be able, later, not only to recall the mechanics of the worm's locomotion but to experience the organism observed as if from within, to internalize its very soul, to feel the force that causes one movement to grow from another, creating a whole series of movements, so that by slipping under the protective membrane of this alien existence I could simultaneously live both it and my own existence; watching my little sister was like observing a translucent green caterpillar as it clings gently with its tiny feet to a white stone: at our touch it suddenly hunches up, shortening its body, the tip of its tail almost reaching its head, and sets itself in motion by means of this curled-up mass, inching its way slowly forward; as a form of locomotion this is no more odd or laughable than our own attempt at outwitting the pull of gravity and overcoming the impediment of our own weight as we carefully place one foot in front of the other; indeed, if we concentrate long enough and manage to relax into a wormlike state, we might easily imagine and can even feel such clinging little feet on our own bellies; our rigid spine might grow softer, more flexible, and if our concentration is powerful enough to discover these possibilities in our own bodies, then we are no longer merely observing the caterpillar but have ourselves become caterpillars.

At this point I may as well confess that there was a time when my sister's condition did not depress me too much, when I didn't think about why, following my parents' custom, I never called her by her name or talked about her simply as my sister, when I didn't question the nature of that peculiar game of hide-and-seek which compelled us to indicate, through an exaggerated show of affection, that no matter how much she might have appeared to be at the center of our family, in reality she was all but excluded from it — as our proper sense of maintaining family equilibrium required, when the tension, fear, and revulsion engendered by my own exclusion and strangeness had not yet alienated me from her and from myself; and at that time my experiments with my sister were certainly not confined to mere observation but took more practical, one might say, aggressively, physical forms, and even though they sometimes went beyond certain civilized limits and therefore had to be kept secret, more of a secret than the kiss — some of what happened I had to keep secret even from myself — I still don't believe I acted inhumanely toward her; I became far more inhumane later on, in my revulsion and by the air of indifference I forced myself to assume; I daresay that our earlier relationship was somewhat humane precisely because of my ruthlessly honest curiosity.

Our games took place in the afternoon, winter afternoons mostly, when the postprandial silence of the house melted into the deepest hour of swift-descending dusk, when the big rooms stood with their doors wide-open, when the muffled sounds of clanging, clattering, and soft thuds filtering in from the distant kitchen had slowly died away; it was quiet outside too — rain was falling, or snow, wind blowing, and I could not wander off in the neighborhood or disappear into the garden but lay on my bed or sat at my desk, glancing frequently out the window, my head propped in my hand over some unsolvable homework; the telephone didn't ring; Grandfather was napping in his armchair, his hands pressed between his legs, the kitchen floor was drying in patches; and Mother's head would be sinking deeper and deeper into her pillow, sleep making her head heavier, her mouth would open a crack, and the book she'd been reading would slip out of her hand; these were the unchecked hours of our house, when my little sister was put to bed in hopes that she'd sleep and let us have a bit of peace and quiet, but after dozing accommodatingly for a few minutes, she'd often wake with a start, climb out of her bed, and, leaving her carefully darkened room, come into mine. She stopped in the doorway and we looked silently at each other.

They made her wear her nightgown, because Grandmother wanted her to believe it was nighttime and she had to go to sleep, though whether the room was darkened or not, I doubt my sister could tell the difference between night and day; she was standing in the doorway, blinded by the light, her eyes completely sunken in her puffed-up face; reaching into the light as if she wanted to grasp it, she groped her way toward me, the blue-and-white cotton nightshirt almost completely covering her little body, but you could tell it wasn't just the arms sticking out of the loose-fitting sleeves or her large, almost grown-up feet, but every part of her, her whole body was thick and graceless, small yet heavy; her skin was an unusual white, a lifeless grayish-white, and for some strange reason it seemed to me to be thick and scabrous, as if the visible coarse surface was covering several other layers of finer skin, as if this hard shell, rather like an insect's armor, overlay the real, human skin that was more like mine: smooth, supple, and downy; this skin had such an effect on me that I used every opportunity to touch it, feel it, and the purpose of our games was often nothing more than for me to try to get close, quickly and with no preliminary fuss, to her skin; I could do it, too, without the slightest pretext — I could simply grab her or pinch her — and if a pretext was needed, it was only to elude my own moral vigilance and make what I wanted to do anyway seem more accidental; of course, the most conspicuously disproportionate part of her body was her head: round, full, insidiously large, like a pumpkin stuck on a broomstick, her eyes two gray dots set in narrow slits, her full, drooping lower lip glistening with abundant globs of saliva that, often mixed with snot, kept dripping from her chin onto her chest, leaving eternal wet stains on her dresses; taking a good look up close, one could see that the black of her pupils was tiny and motionless, which may have been the reason her eyes were so expressionless.

This expressionlessness was at least as exciting as her skin, however, and, insofar as it was intangible, even more exciting, for the lack of the usual signs of emotions differed from what could be observed in a normal pair of eyes which, when trying not to betray emotion, become their own mask, revealing to us that they do indeed have something to hide, suggesting the very thing they conceal; in her eyes nothing gained expression or, rather, it was nothing itself that her eyes were continually and relentlessly giving expression to, the way normal eyes express emotion, desire, or anger; her eyes were like objects one never gets used to; they appeared to be a pair of lenses used for seeing, an impassive outer covering, so when one looked into them and watched their mechanical flutter, one naturally assumed there must be another pair of eyes, more lively and feeling, behind these seeing lenses, just as we would want to see the eyes, the human glance, behind sparkling eyeglasses, convinced that without our seeing them a person's words cannot be properly understood.

When she'd stop at the door of an afternoon, she would say nothing, as though she knew that her shrill voice would only give her away, and rousing our grandmother would have meant depriving herself of the joys and agonies of possible games, the games of our secret complicity; she must have known this, though her memory did not seem to function or, if it did, worked most peculiarly, since there was no rational way to account for what she remembered or what she forgot; she could eat only with her hands, and though adults tried at every meal to train her to use utensils, she didn't catch on, forks and spoons simply fell from her hand, she didn't understand why she had to keep holding them; yet our names, for example, she did remember, she called everyone by their right name, and she was also toilet-trained, and if accidentally she wet or made in her pants, she would sit in a corner for hours, whimpering inconsolably, imposing on herself the punishment Grandmother had devised for her long ago, and there seemed to be an act of goodwill in this self-punishment, a great gesture of goodwill toward us all; although I could not make her learn numbers — we'd study them and she'd promptly forget them — and she had problems recognizing and distinguishing colors, she was always very cooperative, always willing to start afresh, and eager to please us; her strained exertions were quite touching to see, as when she looked for an oft-used everyday word and knit her brow in intense concentration, and would at first fail, because her language, after all, was not words, but then, when the sought-after word or expression did come to her lips in the form of a triumphant scream and she herself could hear it and then be able to identify it, her face lit up with her sweetest smile, her happiest laugh, a smile and laugh of utter bliss the likes of which we would probably never experience.

For while there was nothing in her eyes one could take for expressions of feeling or emotion, her smile and laugh may have been the language she used to communicate with us, the only language she spoke; it was hers, a language for the initiated, to be sure, but perhaps more beautiful and superior to our own because its single though endlessly modifiable word conveyed pure joy of being.

One day I noticed a pin on my desk, an ordinary pin; I had no idea how it got there, but there it was, at the bottom of the deep corridor formed by my scattered books and notebooks, gleaming just bright enough to be noticed on the brown wood; I couldn't really say why then I kept my eye on it for days or why I was so careful not to move it while turning pages in my books or while reading, writing, or just aimlessly shuffling my things, packing and unpacking my schoolbag; I may have also thought that it would disappear as unexpectedly as it had appeared, but no, it would be there again the next day; that afternoon the lamp with the red shade was turned on, though it wasn't quite dark yet, she was standing in the shadows and, looking out from the light cast by the lamp, I more or less sensed her presence in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon, and she, blinded by the light and still groggy from sleep, could not have seen me very clearly; a few more soft tapping sounds were heard from the kitchen and then the silence was complete; I knew the silence would last for another half hour, so the game we had both been waiting for could begin, and we could start it with anything at all; the pin was still on my desk — all I had to do was to make the first move and the rest would follow by itself — so with my fingernails I picked up the pin by its head; I simply wanted to show it to her, to have her see it; she began to smile, most likely getting ready to laugh her most intimate laugh, reluctantly at first, because she was afraid of me and had to overcome this fear each time anew, and I was also afraid of her; but we didn't have much time and I knew I couldn't get out of it anymore, she wouldn't let me; if she didn't make the first move, I would, and if I didn't, then she would; in this we were at each other's mercy.

Later, discovering a true, deep, and therefore not easily explained attraction, I amassed a respectable collection of these pins, carefully storing them away, and not just those that turned up accidentally; after a while I began to look for them, track them down, hunt for them; strangely enough, once it became an obsession, I kept finding them everywhere, which was strange, since I'd never remembered them turning up before so conspicuously and persistently; now I'd come across them in the most unlikely places: in pillows, in cracks, in coat linings, on the street, in the upholstered armrest of an easy chair — with a flash and a prick, they would announce their presence; I began to classify them, having discovered the many different kinds, and as a test I would prick my finger and let it bleed a little; there were all sorts of pins: long and short, with round heads or flat, with heads of colored pearl; rusty pins, stainless-steel pins, straight pins and spear-shaped pins — and they all pricked differently; but that afternoon I had only that plain, long, round-headed one that had landed so mysteriously on my desk that I even had asked my father about it when he happened to stop in my room one evening, and he looked amazed, even baffled, as he bent over, not comprehending what I was showing him; pushing back his straight blond hair, which kept falling in his eyes, his gesture unconscious yet annoyed, he told me gruffly not to bother him with my silly games; this pin, then, the original piece of what later became my collection, I was just showing to her, with no special intention, as if I had to show it to everyone; I simply held it up to the light, and then my little sister took the crucial first step and approached the pin, and that made me move, though still with no specific purpose; I slid off my chair and slipped under the desk.

I may be trembling even more now, as this confession compels me to evoke a series of moves long completed and irrevocably ingrained in me.

Fear is primordial, immeasurable, and seems real only when put into words; it's what we hope is ephemeral but what proves to be permanently alive.

I was trembling quietly then, but not out of fear, and that makes all the difference — not this dark, faltering feeling I have now, but a simple excitement, light, clear, and pure, the kind we experience when placing our limbs beyond the influence of our will, letting insidious desires have free play; for a long while nothing happened; it was warm and dark under the desk, a little like sitting in an overturned cardboard box whose open end, like a mouth, was waiting for her arrival, waiting to swallow her up.

I was conscious of the smell of the wood, that raw smell furniture never loses completely, reminding one of origins, giving one a sense of security, protection, and permanence; I could even smell the characteristic dusty-paper smell of the prosecutor's office (my desk was a superannuated government issue which Father had brought home for me one day); she wasn't moving, but I knew she would come, because after the first move there was always a tension that demanded release and completion — that was our game; then I heard her heavy, clumsy footsteps, she was walking as if she not only had to bear the weight of her body but had to keep moving it forward.

I was sitting like a spider under the farthest corner of my crate-like desk, pinching the head of the pin between my nails, pointing its tiny tip in her direction, when her long white nightshirt appeared, she dropped to her knees, and on her face there was the broadest of grins; I can say that at that moment I was free of all emotion, though it might be argued that the opposite was true, that the moment distilled all my possible emotions; she began to crawl so fast toward me that I thought she wanted to pounce on me, but after a few hasty moves her nightshirt caught under her knees and wouldn't let her go on; suddenly losing her balance, she bumped her forehead into the edge of the desk and fell forward, her head hitting the floor with a thud; I did not stir; according to the secret rules of cruelty she had to reach me unaided.

Her resourcefulness was as unpredictable as her memory; she straightened out, grinned even more broadly and eagerly, if that was possible, as if nothing had happened at all, and with a very natural movement pulled her nightshirt from under her knees, quite casually; I said very natural movement, because this time she found a natural connection between the nightshirt and her fall, while in other, much simpler and more transparent situations, she had not made the connections — for example, wanting to have some fruit, she could quite easily climb up a tree but couldn't come down; she would sit on a swaying branch until somebody noticed her, hold on tight and whimper quietly, though it was no more difficult to come down than to climb up — at times she crept so high that we had to use a ladder to get her down; perhaps only joy, the desire for pleasure, made her resourceful, and as soon as she had satisfied her desire, the object of which may have been a red cherry, a shimmering peach, or even myself, her memory went dark, her resourcefulness expired, and she returned to a world in which objects existed in isolation: a chair was a chair only if someone sat on it, a table was a table only if her plate was placed on it; for her there was no connection between the events that happened around her, which simply happened if they happened, and at most may have blended into one another; it was her impossibly exaggerated grin and her eyes widening into unblinking immobility that suggested a desire to impose some order; now on her bare knees she was creeping closer and closer until she was completely under the desk, where she felt protected, where no one could find out what we were up to; in my own way, I must have been just as blinded by desires as she; she began to pant excitedly and I was breathing louder, too; my hearing sharpened by the straining senses: I could hear, like some strange music, the separate yet harmonious rhythms of our breathing, and if I hadn't raised my hand to point the pin straight at her eyes — her eyeball simply attracted the tip of the pin— she probably would have flung herself on me, for she liked to wrestle, and she didn't shrink back now, her grin didn't fade, either, but remained as it was; hoping for some resolution, she paused for a moment, catching her breath.

She did not flinch, her lids did not flutter, even though the pin point was only a few centimeters from the glistening curve of her eyeball. And my hand didn't move either, I only felt my mouth opening slowly, because I really didn't want to do anything to her, but there she was, wide-open, defenseless, and behind the visible part of her there may have been another being whose senses were more alive, who would have flinched, whose lids would have fluttered, who would have been afraid; if the slightest thing were to happen at that moment, like her hand accidentally swinging toward me or mine moving just a bit forward, who knows what would have been there to prevent the most dreadful end; but there was something, an invisible obstacle, a wall, a mere shade, something that seemed to be the manifestation of a force outside me and just as independent of my most mysterious and secret intentions as it was somehow bound up with them, even if I myself was unaware of them, of my curiosity, which had always triumphed over everything in me — except now! — but even if the thing were to have happened, I could not fault myself, because the insatiable desire to explore what lay behind the seemingly indifferent exterior of things and phenomena, to make the indifference speak and bleed, to conquer it, to make it my own, as I had done with Krisztián's lips and with so many lips after his — this desire made me the victim of that strange outside force; but the dreadful thing could not happen, although I am not sure that what happened instead did not turn out to be even more dreadful.

The frozen, unpromising moment passed, and her body plopped down, lightly, resting on her heels. The new distance between us had a sobering effect. The pin, still pressed tightly between my fingers, was nothing but the evidence of my absurd inanity, a bit of foolishness to be dismissed with a shrug, something that hadn't happened though it could have; I had to close my mouth again; once again I had to listen to the stupid excitement of my own breathing, and hers, too, which kindled in me a kind of simple and ordinary anger, therefore completely mine, mine alone; I failed to reach her; I was locked again in my own solitude; but I did reach after her, just as she was moving away, and with a single movement jabbed the pin into her naked thigh.

And once again nothing happened; she drew back, her body taut, no sound passed her lips; it was as if a moment ago we had been standing on the heights and now were sinking into the depths; she stopped breathing, but not from pain; her nightgown rode up to her belly and exposed the open slit between her outspread thighs, the darkened orifice between two firm, reddish mounds — my pin took aim; I couldn't not do it, but the pin did not prick or even touch the skin, it penetrated the opening. Then I stabbed her in the thigh again.

Not as lightly as before but hard and deep; she screamed; I could see her grin vanish, as if the physical pain had also ripped an invisible veil; and I could also see her look, seeking refuge, but by then she was upon me.

There was no doubt of it, the dark coat on the rack could mean only one thing: a guest had arrived, an unusual guest at that, because the coat was stern-looking, grim, quite unlike the coat that usually hung on that rack, so shabby and threadbare I didn't even feel like doing what I usually did when left alone with strange coats in the hallway and go through the pockets and, if I found some loose change, cling to the wall, listen for noises, wait for the right moment, and then steal a few fillers or forints.

This time I did not hear any strange noises or anyone talking, everything seemed normal, so I simply opened the door and, without fully comprehending my own surprise, took a few steps toward the bed.

A stranger was kneeling in front of the bed. He was holding Mother's hand as it lay on the coverlet, bending over it; he was crying, his back and shoulders shaking; while he kept kissing the hand, with her free hand Mother was holding the man's head; her fingers sank into the stranger's short-cropped, almost completely white hair, as if wanting to pull him closer by his hair, but gently, consolingly.

That's what I saw when I walked into the room, and as I took a few more steps toward the bed, the man lifted his head from Mother's hand, not too quickly, while Mother abruptly let go of his hair and, leaning slightly forward on her pillows, threw me a glance.

"Leave the room!"

"Come here."

They spoke simultaneously, Mother in a choked, faltering voice while her hand quickly rushed to her neck to pull together her soft white bed-jacket; the stranger spoke kindly, however, as if he were really glad to see me come in so unexpectedly; in the end, embarrassed and confused by the conflicting signals, I stayed where I was.

Late-afternoon sunlight pierced through the window, outlining with wintry severity the intricate patterns of the drawn lace curtain on the lifeless shine of the floor; outside, the drainpipes were dripping, melted snow from the roof sloshed and gurgled along the eaves; the shaft of light left Mother and the stranger in shadow, reaching only as far as the foot of the bed, where a small, poorly tied package lay; the unfamiliar little bundle, wrapped in brown paper and clumsily secured with string, must have belonged to the stranger, who wiped off his tears, straightened, then smiled and stood up, showing as much impudence as strength in this quick transition; his suit also seemed strange, like his coat on the rack outside, a lightweight, faded summer suit; he was very tall, his face pale and handsome, and both his suit and white shirt were wrinkled.

"Don't you recognize me?"

There was a red spot on his forehead, and one eye still had tears in it.

"No."

"You don't recognize him? Forgot him so quickly? But you must remember him, you couldn't possibly have forgotten him so fast."

A hitherto unfamiliar excitement made Mother's voice dry and choked, though I could sense she was trying to control herself; still, her voice sounded unnatural, as if she felt she had to play the role of mother, addressing herself to me, her son, as if controlling not so much her emotions, the joy at seeing the unexpected guest, but rather some powerful inner trembling, and the cause of this inner fear and trembling was unfamiliar to me; her eyes remained dry, tearless, and her face changed, which surprised me much more than their intimacy had, or the fact that I didn't recognize the man; a strikingly beautiful, red-haired woman was sitting in that bed, her cheeks flushed, her slightly trembling, nervous fingers playing with the strings of her bedjacket — she seemed to be choking herself with them — a woman who had been intent on keeping a secret from me but whose lovely green eyes, narrowing and fluttering, had just betrayed that she was completely defenseless in this painful and embarrassing situation; I had caught her in the act, found her out.

"It's been five years, after all," the stranger said with a gentle laugh; his voice was pleasant, as was his way of laughing, as if he had a penchant for laughing at himself, for playing freely with his own feelings; he began walking toward me, and indeed became familiar; I recognized his easy, confident stride, his laugh, the candor of his blue eyes, and, most of all perhaps, the reassuring feeling of trust I could not help having in him.

"Five years, that's a long time," he said, and hugged me; he was still laughing, but the laugh was not meant for me.

"Maybe you remember that we told you he was abroad? Well, do you?"

My face touched his chest; his body was hard, bony, thin, and because I automatically closed my eyes I could feel a great deal of this body; still, I did not yield completely to his embrace, partly because some of Mother's nervousness rubbed off on me and partly because the trust evoked by his walk, his ease, and his body seemed to be too familiar and too powerful; the potential exposure of feelings made me more reserved.

"Why go on lying? I've been in jail."

"I told you that story only because we couldn't really explain."

"That's right, in jail."

"Don't worry, he didn't steal or rob or anything like that."

"I'll explain it all to you. Why can't I tell him about it?"

"If you feel you must."

He let this last remark pass unanswered and, as if slowly breaking away from Mother, and focusing entirely on me, he firmly grasped my shoulders, pushed me away a little, took a good look at me, fairly devouring me with his eyes; what he saw, the sight I must have presented to him, not only made his eyes brighter but turned his smile into a laugh, and this laugh was meant entirely for me, meant that he was pleased with me; he even shook me a little, slapped me on the back, planted loud, smacking kisses on both my cheeks, almost biting me; and then, as if he couldn't get enough of my sight and my touch, he kissed me once again, and this time I succumbed to this emotional outburst — I knew by now who he was, I knew it well, because his aggressive closeness pried open heavy locks within me, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I remembered everything, and of course he himself was right there, kissing me, holding me in a tight embrace; I'd never known that the locks were within me; after all, he had disappeared and we had stopped talking about him, he had ceased to exist, and I even forgot about that dark little corner of my memory that had been keeping alive the feeling of his closeness, his looks, his gait, the rhythms of his voice and touch; and now he was here, at once a memory and reality itself; so after that third kiss, with a clumsiness induced by my emotions, I also touched his face with my mouth, but he again pulled me over, almost roughly, once again pressed me against his body and held me there.

"Please turn around, I'm getting up."

Losing Consciousness and Regaining It

When I finally came to on the rocky embankment of Heiligendamm, I may have known where I was and in what condition, yet I'd have to say that this was nothing more than sensing existence in pure, disembodied form, because my consciousness was lacking all those inner flashes of instinct and habit that, relying on experience and desires, evoke images and sounds, ensure the unbroken flow of imagination and memory that renders our existence sensible and to an extent even purposeful, enables us to define our position in the world and establish contact with our surroundings, or to relinquish this connection, which in itself is a form of contact; during the first and probably very brief phase of my returning to consciousness I felt no lack of any kind, if only because experiencing that senseless and purposeless state filled the very void I should have perceived as a lack; the sharp, slippery rocks did make me sense my body, water on my face did make my skin tingle, therefore I had to be aware of rocks and water and body and skin, yet these points of awareness, so keen in and of themselves, did not relate to the real situation which, in my normal state, I would have considered very unpleasant, dangerous, even intolerable; precisely because these sensations were so acute, so intense, and because I now felt what a moment ago I couldn't yet have experienced, which meant that consciousness was returning to its customary track of remembering and comparing, I could not expect to absorb everything my consciousness had to offer, but on the contrary, what little I did perceive of water, stones, my skin and body, wrenched as it was from a context or relationship, alluded rather to that intangible whole, that deeper, primeval completeness for which we all keep yearning, awake or in our dreams but mostly in vain; in this sense, then, what had passed, the total insensibility of unconsciousness, proved to be a far stronger sensual pleasure than the sensation of real things, so if I had any purposeful desire at that point, it was not to recover but to relapse, not to regain consciousness but to faint again; this may have been the first so-called thought formed by a mind becoming once again partially conscious, comparing my state of "some things I can already feel" not with my state prior to losing consciousness but with unconsciousness itself, the longing for which was so profound that my returning memory wanted to sink back into oblivion, to recall what could no longer be recalled, to remember the void, the state in which pure sensation produces nothing tangible and the mind is in limbo with nothing to cling to; it seemed that by coming back to consciousness, by being able to think and to remember, I had to lose paradise, the state of bliss whose fragmentary effects might still be felt here and there but as a complete whole had gone into hiding, leaving behind only shreds of its receding self, its memory, and the thought that I had never been, and would never again be, as happy as I had been then and there.

I also knew that awareness of water, skin, body, and stones was not the first sign of this familiarly tangible world; a sound was.

That peculiar sound.

But as I lay among the rocks, once again blessed with the unpleasant ability to think and remember, I wasn't thinking at all about changing my dangerous situation or weighing my chances of escaping it, though that would have been the sensible and timely thing to do, since I could clearly feel waves washing over me, keeping me under icy water for long seconds; the possibility of drowning didn't even occur to me; what I wanted was to have that peculiar, strong, yet distant sound again within my reach, to luxuriate in the dim weightlessness of pure sensation where, banging, crashing, like some peremptory signal, that sound had first informed me I was still alive.

To this day I cannot decide how it all happened; later, it was quite a surprise to see my bruised and bloody face in the hotel-room mirror; I also have no idea how long I must have lain there, on the embankment, for hard as I tried, I couldn't recall the last moment before fainting, and the fact that I got back to the hotel at two-thirty in the morning meant hardly anything except that it was very late; the night porter, barely awake, opened the large glass door and didn't even notice my condition; there was only one small light in the lobby, I could see the clock on the wall: half past two, no doubt about it, but I had no way of relating the hour to anything that might have happened. I can't be sure, but in all probability a massive, very high wave picked me up — it's so pleasurable to imagine being carried along by it; maybe I lost consciousness in that very first moment — and it must have slammed me down on the rocks like some useless object, but by then, gone were the early afternoon and my arrival in the hotel, the last references that, in spite of temporal confusion and dislocation, I could still locate in time with some certainty.

But the sound I never found again.

Of getting back to the hotel I can give only as poor an account as I have of how I wound up on the rocks; both had occurred independent of my will, though I was undoubtedly the sole participant and victim of each: while in the first I had been entrusted to the water, to an entire chain of lucky accidents and, thanks to it got away with only a few bruises, scratches, and black-and-blue marks, not cracking my skull or breaking my arms and legs, in the second instance the force which we like to call the survival instinct must have been operating in me, its determination as raw and violent as the elements; if we were to take what we proudly call self-awareness or ego and, applying a little mathematics, examine what remains of it when it is caught between the forces of nature and those of our inner nature, both of them so immense and independent, the result would be pitiful if not ridiculous, I'm afraid. We would discover how arbitrary it is to separate things: the fact that in an unconscious state we are one with trees and rocks: a leaf stirs only when, and in the direction, the wind blows on it — we may be unique but not superior! — when my hands and feet (not me, mind you, but my hands and feet) were searching for something solid to hold on to among those loose, slippery rocks and my brain, a soulless automaton, was calculating precisely the intervals between the breaking waves, when my body, adjusting each move for a possible escape, knew by itself that for safety it must first slide farther down the embankment and only then straighten up, when all this was taking place, what was left of the haughty, inflated pride with which I had set out for a walk in the afternoon? in those critical moments what was left of the pain and joy the ego can provide, the ego that's busy chasing its memories and toying with its imagination?

Nothing at all, I might say, all the more so because when I had set out on my walk, I believed my life was so miserably hopeless, so over, so terminated and therefore certainly terminable, that the best I could hope for was a pleasant last walk before taking a bunch of sleeping pills; the reason the story I invented along the way turned out so neatly was also that I felt I'd reached the end of something in my life, but my hands and feet and brain, my whole body, came to the rescue: they did their job smartly, decisively, maturely, perhaps even rather too eagerly, and in the meantime the so-called ego could do little more than scream like a little child: "I want to go home! I want to go home!" somebody did seem to be screaming within me, a somebody known as myself, and for all I know I may have been screaming and crying; at any rate, that was the real me; and my desperate, cowardly terror was humiliating, stayed with me, suppressed every other memory; the ludicrous way the storm put me in my place — a storm that I'd tended to consider as a well-painted backdrop, an effective musical accompaniment to my emotions — was matched by the equally ludicrous way my own nature deprived me of my supposed autonomy: the fact of the matter is, nothing happened; I got a little wet— all right, sopping wet, which meant that at worst I might catch cold; the skin on my forehead was lacerated, maybe the flesh, too, just a little, but it would surely heal; my nose began to bleed but then stopped; I lost consciousness for a time but then came to; yet my body, trying to escape, forcefully mobilized all its necessary animal instincts, as if it were in mortal danger rather than merely exposed to mild insults, like a lizard seeing the inevitable end in every stirring shadow; but more important, the body acted as if the ego, fed by its intense emotions, had not wished for death at all; and the knowledge of nothingness not only showed me that all these past experiences I had imagined as so grandly excessive were in fact ridiculously trivial but also intimated that whatever was yet to come would be no more significant; I was exposed, I was but a receptacle of trivialities, and for all my awareness of what was happening to me, or what might still happen, consciousness was completely useless.

Dawn was slowly approaching; outside, the wind raged on.

My clothes were drying on the radiator and I was standing naked examining myself in the mirror of my hotel room, when there was a knock on the door.

I knew it was the police, and I shuddered, not because I was afraid but because I was naked, yet I didn't care that much, I was totally absorbed in the sight of my naked body, and my shudder wasn't so much a response to the knock, a habitual reaction dictated by decency, as an outward manifestation of total inner exposure which at that moment held my attention more than any anticipated event possibly could.

Why did this particular wish surface — the wish to go home — if not completely unexpectedly, then surprisingly and with such far-reaching implications? why did the body, seeking its own safety, choose to save and have my consciousness articulate this word "home" and why did it both seem so inane and yet also carry a most profound meaning, even if I was at a loss to say what?

Before the knocking, I had to touch the bruise on my forehead to feel what I was seeing in the mirror, to feel the mild pain this superficial cut caused, to perceive the sight and its physical sensation simultaneously; then I passed my finger down the bridge of my nose, my lips, my chin, not ever forgetting that the full-length mirror screwed to the closet door reflected the whole body, just as the story of a single touch always has the whole body for both its hero and its setting; though I tried to guide my finger at an even pace, it seemed to linger on my lips, or maybe the effect of the touch went deeper; then I reached my neck; a small lamp with a waxed-paper shade stood on the night table behind me, and in its faint yellow light the mirror showed the contours of my body more than its detailed, full image: proceeding along the arched rim of the collarbone from the shoulder, I descended into the soft hollow formed by the neck muscles where the bones meet, whence my finger would have moved rapidly across the chest hair toward the dip of the navel, and along the abdomen's gentle bulge to reach and firmly grasp the genitals, the most satisfying spot of physical self-awareness; but my body started, acknowledging the knock on the door.

In truth, I hadn't the slightest desire to go home, none whatsoever; in this regard, my behavior on the previous night had been very telling: in the almost totally dark entranceway Frau Kühnert, blanking out the attractive nakedness of her face, pushed her glasses back on her nose, and the faint light from the paper-capped wall fixture behind her, as if reflected in her glasses from the inside, made her eyes disappear; I could barely see her face, but I sensed her unexpected retreat, maybe from a conspicuous shift in her posture; my rebuff, ostensibly a response to her lengthy plea and explanation, alluded to our possible lust for each other and she wasn't going to endure so gross a humiliation, for all her inclination to servility; her neck stiffened, straightened, and now, looking down at me, she seemed to be retreating to the safer and more conventional forms of social intercourse appropriate for the relationship between an attentive landlady and an ever amiable, pleasant lodger; she straightened her back, too, eliminating the slightly stooped posture meant to protect her breasts — she was finding her way back to that tactful formality which had characterized our former contacts; but the moment I felt this about to happen, happening, already having happened, I felt like someone who has suddenly lost control of himself, who realizes that with sheer will he has destroyed something far more important than his will: I'd finally managed to sever the imperious, coarsely sensual bond between us that might have led to hate or to love; a moment ago, with some recklessness either one would have been possible, it was only a matter of decision; but this, this switch to unpleasantly cool formality, was totally unexpected; against my better judgment, I would have liked quickly to return to the dangerous but potentially more valuable form of behavior which Frau Kühnert was ready to abandon, but which became markedly important, given the tension and pressure it produced in my groin, and this importance was being plainly communicated to me — not to the point of a full erection, but more in the form of a threat with a hint of possible extortion; when I told her I was going to disappear for good, I was actually alluding to the possibility of suicide, not to going home; and I wasn't disappointed, for this unclearly phrased, ambiguous statement had exactly the effect on her I intended: she was surprised, though I don't suppose she understood what I really had in mind; the secret intention I had been nursing for months, which had matured into a decision, must have deepened my voice so that I could imply the necessary sincerity and seriousness to draw her back into the magnetic field she had been trying to escape; what I was hoping to accomplish, aside from gratifying my ego, I cannot say — perhaps, in light of my imminent death, I wanted to be pitied, or perhaps it would have been too unpleasant to be left alone with the telegram, though I knew that whatever it said, it could not change my mind; in answering her questions, eager and weighing every possible danger I might be facing, I did not say what I really wanted; I didn't tell her, for example, to leave me alone, that nothing mattered anymore, that she was too late anyway, but if she wanted she could take off her pullover and let me close my eyes at last, I didn't want to see anything, I didn't want to know or hear anything anymore, so let's try to work on a single moment, and why not this one, we should be able to manage that much — but instead of saying that, I reminded myself of a previously attempted solution and I described my intended return home as a reassuring form of disappearance; of course, this was only another way of avoiding her, and myself, because at that moment the word "home" meant nothing more than a distant hope of no real significance; I used it then as a tactful lie: and here in the mirror of the hotel room was this body now, and though neither its sight nor its palpable feel could convince me of the importance or necessity of its continued existence, yet I could not have named anything to prove my unavoidable presence more than this image in the mirror.

Unexpected as the knocking was, it still seemed as if I had been waiting for it — not surprising, since the circumstances made it inevitable, it had to happen; but when it did, when I heard the knock, I didn't feel like hastening events; I did not rush to get dressed — in fact, that didn't even occur to me; I stayed as I was, undisturbed, absorbed in scrutinizing my body, as if there had been no knocking at all; oddly enough, I suddenly remembered something seemingly very remote: I thought of Thea Sandstuhl, I even had time to recall a single gesture of hers: in trying to trace points where random thoughts converge, we may rediscover the psychic miracle that makes the distant appear close, as if merely a matter of simple, mechanical associations; I thought of the afternoon I became acquainted with Melchior, and the knocking I heard I took to be a direct consequence of his escape; the particular moment that came to mind was when during rehearsal Langerhans had impatiently clapped his pudgy hands and in his unpleasantly high-pitched voice said, "Enough! I told you not to stick that hump so high!" and, tearing his gold-rimmed glasses off his pasty face, flew into a rage; and Thea remained as she was, a prisoner of her own gesture, much as I was now, in front of the mirror; on other occasions, after such directorial interruptions, Thea astounded those watching her with her ability to shift emotional gears with incredible ease and speed: she could be crying, screaming, or gasping amorously in one moment and in the next listen obligingly and attentively to the director's latest instructions; it was as if there were no boundaries between her various emotional states, one flowing naturally from the other, or as if bridging the gap between them, making smooth transitions, posed no difficulties for her, which in turn aroused the suspicion of outside observers that she was not present in any of these situations — though she appeared most subtly convincing in all of them; but that afternoon she overwhelmed us with the slowness of her transition, involuntarily demonstrating in pure form the fine gradations through which we can force our emotions to move from one subject to the next: the voice reached her body like a delayed jolt; Langerhans's admonition had already been uttered, but she, with the contradictory emotion of a moment ago, was still pointing the heavy sword at the bare chest of Hübchen, kneeling before her; she made her move as if she hadn't heard what she had to have heard, giving us a sense of the sharp line dividing inner drives from external pressure; her body gave a start only when the response already seemed late, and only then did it freeze in an attitude of innocent, appealing embarrassment.

She looked lovely in a tight-fitting, richly laced, purple dress which at once emphasized and concealed her body's tense, uneasy lines; her neck and torso tilted a little, as though the director's voice had indeed pushed her, kept her from touching the desirable naked chest before her, from following through on her inner urge to deliver the lover's stab; but she also could not yet do what the director, for some inscrutable reason, wanted her to do: that she slowly lowered the sword she'd been gripping with both hands, its tip clanging to the floor, did not mean she was able to choose between her inner urge and the outside command, but merely that she was sidetracked by a deeply ingrained impulse to obey, turning her response into a clumsy display of obedience; Thea considered herself an intelligent actress and always spoke with contempt of colleagues who, amateurishly, wanted to "live" their parts: "Oh, him, the poor thing, he identifies, he becomes the character, his tears flow so much I feel like scratching his ear to make him stop or asking him if he needs to take a crap; but the audience eats it up, it's grateful to him and wouldn't think of disturbing him, after all he's a true artist, the genuine article, we can see with our own eyes how much he must work and suffer for this noble art, poor thing, how he suffers for us, can't you see, the idiot lives the part for us because he can't do it for himself!" these were some of the things she had said, but now her embarrassed body and unembarrassed glance revealed how much she had been captured by the situation, which had nothing to do with the method of acting that is based on "living the part" yet required of her a degree of inner fervor which, despite her firmest intentions, made her open, vulnerable, oblivious to her professional experience and technique; it was this tension that made her so suitable for the situation created not by her but by Langerhans's crafty aggressiveness.

It was a vicious circle: when Hübchen tore off his rough shirt, the sight of his naked body must have stunned her, caught her unprepared, so she couldn't ignore it, and even though they must have rehearsed that scene at least ten times and might go over it a hundred more times, it would always wind up on the same emotional track chosen by Langerhans, who had, very slyly, also taken into account Thea's abilities and desires.

The knocking on the door of my hotel room now turned to banging, pounding fists.

"If you stick it up so high, then she, too, can see it!" Langerhans yelled, and it was hard to know whether he was truly fuming or this moment was simply a pretext to make the already heavy air of discipline in the rehearsal hall even more oppressive; the makeup man, who liked to sit at the edge of the director's platform, so that in time I had become familiar with his fuzzy, freckled pate, sprang up and ran to the lighted acting area, his white robe fluttering like wings, while Langerhans's anger seemed to subside with each sentence he spoke, until he had regained the whispering and rather mannered speech that was his trademark: "What we need now is for her to see his beauty, nothing else!" he said, still yelling; "We need only his beauty now," he added more quietly, "so that the woman should be willing to spread her legs for him right here, onstage, do you understand?" he was whispering now, with a soft, dainty motion replacing his glasses on his flat nose, "so it should be much lower, as I showed you."

But the improbably open look in Thea's eyes began to waver and fade, releasing Hübchen's near-naked, let's just say pleasingly proportioned, body; only when the director and the makeup man were already standing next to her to take a better look at the ill-placed hump — and not even then — could she turn away or move; it became almost palpably clear that a very powerful emotion could not find an outlet and she didn't know what to do with it, nobody seemed to want it, she had to wait until it would be repressed or help arrived, just as I was standing there in the hotel room, listening helplessly to the insistent banging on the door, realizing that all this time I had been looking at myself with Melchior's eyes; and that's exactly how Hübchen must have felt: he didn't budge either but remained on his knees, looking into Thea's eyes, and then rather awkwardly, foolishly, burst out laughing, braying like a teenager, which anywhere else might have caused embarrassment but here nobody paid attention to real feelings and emotions which, like the chips and shavings of the work being shaped on the stage, were flying in all directions; it wasn't as if Hübchen's body and amazing, creamy-white, hairless skin had aroused ordinary, offstage feelings in Thea — though that would not have been so unusual, because women like to boast, even at the risk of losing out by such statements, that the beauty of the male body has scarcely any effect on them, their contention being borne out, apparently, by the truth that bone structure, muscle definition or the lack of it, even flabby softness have no discernible effect on sexual prowess (one need only note that after penetration the body's external features lose importance and become mere conductors, mediators), though the symbolic value of the visual experience is far from negligible; beauty is the advance payment on desire, an invitation to pleasure, and there is no difference between the sexes in their preference for what is firm, well shaped, supple, and strong over bodies that are shapeless, flaccid, washed-out, and feeble; in this sense the sight of the human body is not a question of aesthetics but of vital instincts: not only could Hübchen's body be called perfect, but Langerhans, with calculated and characteristically almost perverse shrewdness, had Hübchen's trousers made with a low waistband to make it look as if they had slid down accidentally, leaving his bony hips and gently sloping belly bare and suggesting that he wore nothing underneath; and though he wore soft leather boots and the cleverly shortened pants on top, one had the impression of total nakedness, and only at his groin did one's glance stumble on discreet covering.

Thea finally looked at me.

She probably couldn't see me, I sat too far away in the hall, and her glance could not easily pass over the sharp line separating light and darkness there, but the vague feeling that somebody was sitting calmly, watching her, and not without empathy, was evidently enough for her to retreat from unpleasant, all-too-human openness into the more secure role of the actress; anyway, I had the feeling that my sheer presence was of some help; at almost the same moment, a bit later, Langerhans must also have noticed her poignant confusion, and rather gently, but with the professional aloofness of a man who knows that the psychological maintenance of his actors is part of his job, he placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezed it encouragingly, helped her recovery along; and Thea, sensing the warmth of a strange body, suddenly tipped her head sideways without otherwise altering her position in the slightest, touching the hand with her face and locking it between her face and shoulder.

And they stayed that way, their images reflected on the huge, slightly raised glass panel covering the walls of the rehearsal hall.

Hübchen was still kneeling, with the makeup man bent over him trying to remove his hump; Langerhans was watching his actress's face; and Thea, still clutching the lowered sword, rested her head on her director's hand.

The tableau-like scene seemed infinitely tender, but the greenishly sparkling glass backdrop made it look stiff and cold.

It was late afternoon by now, only a few of us were left, and it was so quiet you could hear the hum of the radiators and the gently tapping rain on the roof.

"There's nothing wrong with my seeing his hump," Thea now said; although there was a cooing tone in her voice as she tried to match her emotions to his touch, Langerhans wasn't going to be taken in so easily and cheaply; he withdrew his hand with undignified haste and blushed, as he always did when contradicted: "It seems you still don't understand your own situation, Thea," he said quietly, his voice devoid of emotions not relevant to the subject at hand (it was this voice that made him so detestable and unapproachable): "You shouldn't worry about yourself so much, you know; after all, what can happen? Nothing. Go ahead, don't be afraid to be a little more vulgar, it's okay, we're talking business here, plain and simple. You'll simply sell your body, that crack between your legs, to be exact, because that's all you've got left, that slit. Your life has finally revealed its true nature to you. That's all there is, that hole, that body, and nothing else. He's killed your husband. So what? He's killed your father-in-law. Big deal. He's also killed your father, but that doesn't matter either, because you're scared, because you're all alone. They're all dead, but you're alive, and when he tears off his shirt you can see he's quite attractive. You don't even want to see his hump. So his offer sounds like a good deal all around. Be a slut, my dear, and don't try to be his mother."

"But even a slut could be a mother, have you ever thought of that?" Thea said, even more quietly.

"Go ahead, catch your breath. Take your time."

"You're being very nice."

"No, I'm just trying to understand you."

"But what should I do with all that phlegm? while I'm doing all that cursing it just builds up, almost choking me. What should I do? I think I should be spitting at that point. It was dumb to cut that. I'll choke on it, I'm telling you. What should I do?"

"Swallow it."

"I can't, I just can't."

"You can't spit on the glass, if that's what you had in mind."

Thea shrugged her shoulders. "You still need me?"

"We'll take a short break," Langerhans said.

I got up from the chair on which I had been comfortably swinging back and forth; Thea was heading toward us.

This was the dull part of the day, as always happened when rehearsals stretched into the late afternoon: even if the rehearsal hall's tall, narrow, highly placed windows had not been covered with black curtains, anyone interested in the outside world and looking out through the heavily barred windows would see little besides a few slender chimneys rising above grim walls, darkening in the rapidly descending twilight, and blackened roof tiles across the way, and a sky that more often than not was depressingly, monotonously gray; still, sometimes I'd stand by those curtains for a while, usually after politely offering my chair to Thea, who, when not onstage, liked to sit next to Frau Kühnert at the little table near the edge of the director's platform; my small courtesy toward Thea came in handy because around that time of the day, as late afternoon was turning into evening, insecurity and anxiety took hold of me, nearly suffocated me; we'd call it simple anxiety, I suppose, since I really had nothing to do here, I was only an observer, which after a while proved to be not only exhausting but downright unhealthy; I just had to get up and look for something to do; but the view from the window didn't relieve my anxiety, if only because I went on being an observer — though not of gestures, faces, and accents, which in the artificial light of the cavernous hall had become all too familiar, along with the personal, often secret motives animating them; what I saw from the window, from behind crude iron bars, was a different set of relationships, between walls, roofs, and the sky, and I had nothing to do with them either, except as an observer, yet even here I could see some subtle changes: no matter how relentlessly gray the sky may have appeared, the various shades of light had enough play to emphasize certain details over others, so that the same view in fact was constantly changing, looked new and different; and similarly, under the even glare of the rehearsal lights there were enough surprises to make transparently familiar gestures and responses seem startlingly fresh; in my better moments I could consider myself rich in the accumulated knowledge of these details and the relationships among them, but I had to forgo the natural desire to contribute actively, to participate; my mind may have been producing some very decent ideas, but I had no clearly defined role, no real niche, and this proved to be a fundamental handicap here, where one's place in the strict hierarchy was determined by the role one played, where only rank could give validity and weight to one's observations; in a certain sense I was tolerated only in the chair I occupied, and it wasn't a permanent chair either but an extra one put in for me, temporarily; I was nothing more than an "interested Hungarian," as somebody once said, standing right behind me, not at all concerned that I might overhear this odd characterization, which, come to think of it, wasn't offensive, given its factual correctness, perhaps more accurate than the person who spoke it might have thought; anyway, my situation was not so unusual or unfamiliar; I could have found it highly symbolic that I was deprived of a chance to interfere with the course of events, made a silent witness, an observer condemned to inaction who also had to bear, all by himself, the consequences of his silence and his helplessness, without the chance to blow off steam; I was indeed a Hungarian, in this sense very much a Hungarian: no wonder Frau Kühnert's pleasant attentiveness and Thea's flattering interest were so gratifying.

Thea stopped in front of us, and by now I was holding the back of the chair, ready to give her my seat; there was something characteristically exaggerated in my politeness — I shouldn't have been so afraid of losing that modicum of goodwill she had shown me — but she wasn't ready to sit down yet, she didn't even step up on the platform as she usually did but, rather, she slid her two elbows to the table and without so much as casting a glance at us leaned her chin on its edge, like a child — she had to get on her toes to do this — and then, resting her head on her arms, slowly closed her eyes.

"What a disgusting piddling around all this is," she said softly, without batting her eyelids; she was perfectly aware that her little performance, for all its hamming, was impressive enough to hold us captive; after all, a truly great actress was doing the hamming, by way of relaxing, and it seemed to betray real emotion. Frau Kühnert did not respond, let her go on, and I didn't start for the window, as was my custom, to disappear behind the black curtains, I was curious; she paused effectively, making us wait, then let out a small sigh, giving us time to watch her shoulders gently rise and fall; with her eyes still closed, she lowered her voice even more, making herself barely audible and, as someone yielding to exhaustion but unable to stop the flow of thoughts, continued, savoring her words: "He'll ruin me, he has ruined me, with this disgusting fussing and piddling."

By now the silence in the rehearsal hall was so deep you could hear not only the rain pattering on the roof and the radiators humming but Frau Kühnert closing her prompt book with a real thump; but she must have meant this rather abrupt gesture as only a prelude to another, more sensible move, because it made as little sense to close the prompt book as it did to leave it open: Frau Kühnert came to the first rehearsal with the full play already memorized, as the actors did, and from then on her only job was to enter the various changes in the text, erase them if necessary, re-enter the final version in ink, and make sure the changes were clearly marked in all copies of the script, and to be on the safe side, she had to sit there with the thick master copy, saving her attention and voice for the moments when someone unexpectedly got stuck, when she would feed them their cues with the eagerness of a good student; this happened very seldom, of course, so now, like one who has finally found real work for which she feels inner motivation, she rested her veiny, masculine hand on the closed book a second, and then gently yet eagerly slid the hand onto Thea's head.

"Come, darling, sit down here, rest a little," she whispered, and though her words were loud enough to be heard, people were too tired to turn around and give her a dirty look.

"He wore me out completely."

"Come, our young friend here will give you his seat."

They had their game down pat; Thea still didn't budge; her face, like an open landscape anyone could freely admire, was relaxed, absorbed in itself.

"You ought to give that boy a ring, Sieglinde; why don't you call him for me?" she continued in the same, softer than whispering voice: "Please. The way I feel, I don't think I have the strength to go home. The thought that my old man's been piddling around all day, just the thought of that makes me sick. How I'd like to enjoy myself for a change! Maybe we could go someplace together, I've no idea where. Someplace. And you could call the boy for me, right? Will you call him?"

She seemed to be playing at someone talking in her sleep, maybe overdoing her part a bit in the game; because she had to get Frau Kühnert to carry out a most unpleasant task, she almost went too far.

"I don't dare call him, because the other day he told me not to. He told me please to stop calling him. Not very polite, is he? But if you call him it's different, you might be able to soften him a little. Would you do that for me? It wouldn't take much, just a little buttering up," she said, and fell silent as though expecting a reply; but before Frau Kühnert had a chance to answer, Thea's unpainted lips began moving again: "I'd love to buy my old man a great big garden, and I shall, too, once I have lots of money, because it must be awful for him to sit in that horrible flat all day, just awful — for me it's all right, except right now I don't feel like going home — but for him it must be depressing as hell, he ends up smelling bad after piddling about all day; I mean, imagine, that's all he does all day, sits down, gets up, lies down, sits down again, and that's how he spends his whole life; if he had a garden, he could at least move around while doing nothing; shouldn't I buy him a garden? will you call that boy?"

Our Afternoon Walk Continued

But after so many digressions, let's return to that afternoon walk — we'll have enough time to deal with what is yet to happen, for it's the past we so often forget, and so quickly, too; let's go back to where we left off, to the moment when, having concluded the fresh-air cure in rather dramatic circumstances, we started on the straight road leading to the station, walking under the giant plane trees.

Here we immediately reached the peak of sensory delights, the gayest hour of the promenade; the trees' long shadows fluttered in the gentle sea breeze, which also carried the soft music of the dance band set up in the open lobby, now bringing the strains closer in unpredictable waves, now turning them into garbled snatches and scattering them into the distance; carriages were rolling toward the railroad station to pick up new arrivals and one could already hear the puffing, whistling locomotive; riders were trotting, alone and in groups, down the bridle path, switching to brisker gallops as they rounded the tidy stationhouse, only to be swallowed up by the dark and dense beech forest whose very name, the Great Wilderness, had a quaint archaic flavor; and the strollers! at this hour everyone whose cure did not call for bed rest was on his feet and out here, was expected to be here and to cover this short distance on foot, to and fro, stopping along the way for a brief chat or an exchange of pleasantries; if one walked with someone more serious or with a more interesting topic of conversation, the distance could be covered more than once and away from the general traffic, but one didn't tarry too long with any one partner, for that might he taken for unseemly eagerness, and here everyone was watching everyone else; one had to be careful that the casual informality — the robust bursts of laughter, the abrupt darkening of brows, the waving of hats, kissing of hands, the knowing chuckles, trembling nods, and raised eyebrows — an informality full of resentments and petty jealousies, naturally, should not violate the familiar conventions and should seem spontaneous, for all its glib artificiality; young boys and girls, more or less my age, trundled colored hoops along the road's smooth marble slab, and thought they were especially adroit if the hoops did not get caught in the folds of ladies' dresses or roll under gentlemen's legs; on occasion, even Heinrich, Prince Mecklenburg, would appear, in the company of his much younger and somewhat taller Princess and surrounded by attendants, and each time he did, the promenade's unwritten rules were altered; outwardly nothing seemed to change except that the apparent naturalness appeared a shade less natural, but the experienced stroller, as soon as he reached the decorative marble urns on their slender white pedestals, could sense that the Prince would be there; the two marble urns with their velvet-smooth cascading purple petunias formed a kind of gateway to the tree-lined esplanade; yes, the Prince would definitely be present today, because backs were a bit straighter, smiles a shade friendlier, laughter and conversation so much softer; soon, though not yet, he would be seen on the arm of the Princess, in the wide semicircle of his attendants, listening attentively to someone, registering every word with grave nods of his gray head; it was improper to seek him out even with a curious glance; he had to be noticed accidentally, as it were, and with the same casual ease we also had to adjust our pace to the rhythm of his steps and seize that fraction of a second during which, without interrupting his conversation, he might honor us with his attention, so that our respectful greeting would not dissolve in the air but might be returned; we had to be alert to avoid any potentially embarrassing thing and to pay attention to proper decorum; and the strollers thronging the promenade were indeed alert, each and every one well prepared: what if the Prince should wish to exchange a few politely pleasant words with me! with my humble person, of all people! and they would watch and listen with mixed curiosity and envy, determined to learn the identity of the lucky person the Prince talked to, and later to find out what had been said.

Mother, who thanks to her upbringing was particularly adept, one might say accomplished, in matters of decorum, accepted Father's politely proffered arm with a gesture worthy of the gentlest wife, and smiling the loveliest smile of the afternoon walked with him arm in arm, her chest and back erect, gracefully picking up the train of her elegant mauve dress with three fingers of her free hand, pressing against him comfortably, somewhat committing her body to his care; I lagged behind, because I couldn't stand their bickering, but also catching up and joining them at Mother's side when I was curious; it seemed to me that these slightly raised flowing gowns (one never raised them too high, of course) polished the white marble pavement to a sleek, smooth shine; those fabulous fabrics! those fine silk, lace, and taffeta dresses swishing and rustling, and dainty shoes gliding smoothly on the bright surface, with the boots tapping just a little harder! with such activity all around, and Father's permanent smile, a forced smile to be sure, it was not in the least surprising that strangers and even acquaintances were unaware of, and from my parents' posture could not guess, the intense hatred they had for one another: "In that case we ought to leave immediately! The purpose of our stay here, my dear Theo, if I'm not mistaken, is not for you to be entertained but for me to get well!" — in these quiet, frequently repeated scenes Mother was in control of their emotions; she hated more, and more strongly, because Father's mere presence was the source of her sufferings; he was present, yet she could not reach him, she was like one aroused but not satisfied, while Father seemed completely indifferent (though he may not have been) to the emotional exertions of this slender female body; it was Mother's stronger passions and her exceptional skills in handling social situations that enabled her to take revenge during the most sensitive moments on these afternoon walks — and hers was no ordinary revenge: the more elegantly she carried it out, the more ruthless she became, she had the upper hand; but revenge is treacherous; during the momentary lulls in the complex, well-worn ritual of strolling and chatting, in full view of the promenaders, she murmured and hissed into Father's ears her sharpest and nastiest remarks, which Father, because of his less agile physical and mental makeup, could not possibly return in kind; she did this accompanied by her most enchanting smile.

On that memorable day it wasn't the comment he had made that triggered Mother's indignation, at first restrained and only threatening but quickly accelerating into a sweeping, all-consuming force: "Or am I mistaken, dear Theo? Tell me! Why don't you say something? You know, when you're like this, I'd really like to spit in your face!" and it wasn't because Father, breaking their previous agreement, would not wait for us to finish the prescribed exercises before sounding his warning that if we were too slow we might miss the train; in fact, it seemed to me that she tried to provoke the warning by deliberately slowing down her breathing, which I tried in vain to adjust by setting an example of the proper, prescribed rhythm; no, Father's careless and graceless warning was a sign, I'd say an open demonstration, of the ever-present explosive discord between them, a pretext for venting their emotions; I can still hear him uttering that sentence, alluding to a rather simple fact, how his words came out awkward and forced in spite of his efforts to sound casual, how his deep voice slipped into a higher register; but for all his clever dissembling he could not deceive Mother, who heard clearly what he had tried but was unable to conceal: his growing impatience.

It was Privy Councillor Frick who was to arrive on the train, and Father had been waiting for him anxiously for several days; significantly enough, in talking about him they would call him "the privy councillor" or "Frick," carefully avoiding his Christian name even though he was Father's closest and best friend and had been for decades, a childhood friend; as far as I can judge in retrospect, their bond was an unclouded, remarkably strong one, for in spite of considerable differences in character and intellect, their strong common roots evidently determined similar developments, and this was only natural, since they were both the product of and, in the conduct of their adult lives, also fugitives from the same religious institution famous, indeed notorious, for its medieval rigor; their kindred spirits, therefore, may have been a belated testimony to their Spartan upbringing or, just as likely, to their rebellion against it; so if Mother took care that the councillor's Christian name did not pass her lips, this was her way of letting them both know that she had no desire whatsoever to have a personal relationship with a man whose "immoral lifestyle," as she put it, whose cruel and aggressive nature had corrupted and continued to corrupt Father, whose "moral fiber, unfortunately, was much too weak": "Theodor, you behave like a charmed insect near a bright light, that's how you behave! You are childish and ridiculous when the two of you are together, and I am deeply ashamed!" Father, by the way, not only pronounced his friend's first name with almost sensuous delight but also used coy terms of endearment, calling him ducky, sweety, my little pussycat, even my little rotter, though he also preserved the rigid formality of their alma mater: the two of them never used the familiar form of address, and when talking to Mother about him, Father invariably avoided using the councillor's Christian name, to keep her out of the territory of that friendship, out of that warmest of relationships, the very place Mother would have liked to invade even at the cost of destroying it; this was the mysterious region, the forbidden zone, about which neither of them would brook any nonsense.

Once, awakening from my afternoon nap, I myself witnessed the kind of scene Mother would surely have disapproved of: the two men were standing on the terrace in the sunlight; lying on the narrow sofa in the living room, I didn't even have to move to see them through the muslin curtain fluttering back and forth in the afternoon breeze, but they could not see me — it was too good a moment, too rare an opportunity for me willingly to give myself away, and anyway, I was still a bit dazed from sleep — they were leaning against the railing, their arms resting on the stone balustrade, alone in that sun-drenched space, not too close to each other, though their fingers probably did touch on the rough, weather-beaten stone, adding a certain intimacy as well as an element of tension to their tête-à-tête; they stood there facing each other in identical poses, in their lightweight summer suits, as if mirror images; they were even the same height, it was hard to decide who was reflecting whom, maybe they were mutually reflecting each other; "Our instincts, my dear friend, our instincts and our stimuli," Frick was saying even before I opened my eyes, and his voice echoed into my awakening so pleasantly, softly and naturally, as if it were my own, as in the state when we think to ourselves and in our own voice, not addressing someone else; "Even as I stand here and have the honor of looking into your eyes, even this, every moment of our existence! because we are pages that have been filled out, fully written, all of us; that's why we find ourselves so boring! Moral refinement, good and evil, these are all silly, ludicrous notions. You know I don't like to talk about God, I simply don't like this God, but if there is still a place where He can be found, or where He can find us, it must be in our deepest instincts, there He may still reign supreme. If that is your belief, I join you in it, but even here He must be doing the job without the slightest effort, without even lifting His little finger, because He has already set the course, He's nothing left to do except to watch impassively as we act out what He's set into motion, what in fact He has already carried out and inscribed in all of us. All I can say — and I hope I'm not boring you with this improvised discourse — is that moral refinement and consequently notions of good and evil are never found in things themselves but, rather, we are the ones who belatedly place them into things, and the reason philosophers, psychologists, and other useless folk feed us their pitiful fare about these notions being inherent in things is that they consider it too brazen, too simple, and too pedestrian to seek the motives for our acts in our primitive instincts; they are looking for something loftier than instincts, higher than common things, chasing after some noble idea or concept that will make sense out of this disconcerting chaos. But this is nothing but the consolation of the weak! And of course they have failed to notice the inner nature of this chaos; they have told us nothing, or nearly nothing, about the gratifying details of this inner nature, they haven't even considered them. So for them, the things everybody must experience all the time have become improper and indecent. Now when I hear people talk about what is good or what is evil, I think of how I haven't managed to take a good shit today or of needing to let out a good fart, which in terms of spiritual cleanliness is most essential, though I know that in decent company one doesn't do such things. Believe me, moral refinement is nothing more than holding back a fart for a few more moments."

"You are a believer, my pet, how reassuring; I envy you!" Father said this in the same intimately soft voice his friend had used, and all this time not only their heads and bodies remained motionless but their eyes hardly flickered; they were looking straight into each other's eyes as openly as they could, as if this eye contact were more important than any other form of communication; the two pairs of eyes did not even approach the perilous edge of an amorous union, they did not seek that particular refuge: what was actually happening had a much more significant and powerful effect on them, perhaps because they knew that a physical relationship was impossible, and they held each other captive with their eyes, gradually overcoming the sensual excitement two eyes immersed in each other can offer, though at the same time exploiting these natural centers of sensuality, from there to shift their glances just enough to notice the tiny movements in the wrinkles around the lashes, the eyelids, the eye sockets, leading to two identical involuntary and discreet smiles; "Should I express myself more plainly?" said Frick, his question a response to a request never made, and Father said, "It wouldn't hurt," supporting his friend in what I think he wanted to do anyway: they didn't merely venture over the slippery topic of the body but moved with equal ease through the subtler folds of each other's thoughts; did not give in to any possible weakness, and in this sense there was something cold and cruel in their confabulation; try as they might to elude all-powerful Eros, still, in the utter shamelessness with which they observed, controlled, and read each other's mind, and in the meticulous regard they had for each other, crafty Eros did manage to gratify them, and itself: "Look, it may be a bit much to say that it's all between our legs," continued Frick; "But I thought that's exactly what you had in mind," Father retorted. When exchanging such short, clipped sentences, the depth, color, and strength of their voices seemed to adjust to and blend themselves into each other so fully that one had the impression of a single person speaking, arguing, debating with himself: "No, no, far from it! If it were so, I'd be committing the same reprehensible error," Frick said, somewhat louder, but still without much emotion; "Elaborate!" Father said, and his request, like a short pause, remained suspended in midair.

"True to our old habit, let's start with the obvious: here I stand and here you are facing me," said Frick, who now appeared taller than Father because he was slim, though proportionately so, not in the least gaunt— and I don't mean just his body, which I had an opportunity to observe fully on the beach, as he was wearing one of those newly fashionable swimsuits that cling to the body when wet, for his face, too, was lean, the skin adhering to his skull in a smooth, tight fit; he was beginning to grow bald, and to mask this as much as possible — he was quite vain — he had his fine sun-bleached hair cut short in military fashion; "If we swept aside with one grand gesture all the ethical norms drummed into us, the only certainty left to us is this, that we are here, the sense and sight of our sheer existence, that's all we can contemplate, and that is no small thing; and I must admit that unlike the educated dilettantes I referred to before, I am not interested in anything else."

At this point, however, Father gave a quiet laugh, and as this short, not unintentional chuckle bespoke sarcasm, Frick's vehemence slackened a bit, and on his face, surely one of the most extraordinary faces I ever laid eyes on, the strain of concentration eased, loosened by momentary embarrassment, which was remarkable because his face was defined by an inner calm, a natural hauteur, an unruffled superiority, and of course its starkness, as if nature had shaped it in bold strokes, adding neither fussy details nor charming little folds of fat to the skull which carried the face and, let's note this now, to which it would be pared down in death: no matter how quickly Frick spoke, or how much, at times his face struck me as a skull, a death's-head, a grim paperweight on a desk, or as a structure of boiled-down bones, while at other times, as on that day, it was its perfect roundness that caught the eye, the taut, dark-toned skin turned almost black in summer, gleaming on his forehead, the hairline wrinkles neatly tucked away on the close-shaven cheeks, yet not even these dry furrows made him look older than he was, for what stood out in all their brilliance was his huge expressive eyes, cool gray eyes with a piercing, ruthless gaze, their sternness further emphasized by his pointed nose and rather thin lips, though the soft dimple of the chin, like a child's, gave the face an appealing gentleness; "Don't think that the desire for power doesn't imply physical pleasure," he continued, his momentary embarrassment relaxing into a gently sardonic smile; standing motionless, they were still holding each other's unaverted gaze; "On the contrary, the desire for and wielding of power can immerse you in pleasure so deep, or lift you up so high, that the only comparable thrill, deeper and higher still, would have to be that of sexual climax, the very greatest of physical pleasures which each of us ought to reach in the manner best suited to our nature, and that is just what I was getting at, my dear, that everything around us desires, and offers, the pleasure of ejaculation, if we are free enough to note these desires and offers, so it was perfectly sweet of you to interrupt me with your little chuckle, to sidetrack me in this direction, leading to the very essence of things! I don't mind a bit," he said, pausing long enough to catch his breath; "That's right, there's a kind of congenial balance between our senses and our thoughts, between instinct and reason, the balance of counterbalances, if you will; and who is better suited to revel in the pleasures of existence than he who holds power? Power alone can carry him to the limits of the mind, of the intellect; and when he returns from those frontiers, if he can make it back, that is, he can truly indulge his senses, because having lost his fear of perilous extremes and shaken off all moral constraints, he can be equally uninhibited when turning to sensual pleasures, seeking out the extreme limits of that realm as well; and who is freer than the man who delves into the pleasure and pain of his own limited possibilities — limited because predetermined— which he will explore to the utmost, my friend, yes, even if our freedom doesn't allow us to know what these possibilities are for, what anything is for; freedom is indeed limited, but only in that it is never an abstraction but rather the practical exercise of the will, which is fully aware of its own possibilities but which the mind cannot conceive. But why am I blathering on, you know what I mean."

"Another exciting little adventure?" Father asked.

"Something like that," he sighed.

"Tell me about it," Father said.

"An actress," he answered.

"I wager she is blond and indecently young" — thus Father.

"Oh, that's the least that can be said of her!"

And he would have continued, too, describing the affair not just in general terms but in great detail, as I had the good fortune to hear him do on another occasion, but at that moment they had to turn toward the wide staircase leading from the park to the terrace, cutting the conversation short just when it promised to turn most exciting — for, returning from her leisurely afternoon coffee break, Mother had appeared in the company of Fräulein Wohlgast, with a clear air of shared intimacy as they slowly walked up the stairs, and the young lady, in her usual loud manner and somewhat raspy voice, was launching into a playful attack: "Oh, the men," she exclaimed at the bottom of the staircase, her words almost coinciding with Frick's last sentence, "just when we are discussing such weighty matters, too; I am telling you, Frau Thoenissen, there was a time when men held our destiny in their hands; those days, I daresay, are over; while we make plans and reach important decisions, they engage in frivolous chitchat, or am I wrong? will they be honest with us, might I ask them not to tell us fibs just this once?"

But all this happened much earlier, maybe two or three summers earlier than the afternoon I referred to before, at least that's how my memory has preserved it, and since a child's mind can't absorb all the cleverness and foolishness of adults, my imagination has had to fill in the white spots of this scene of long ago.

Much earlier, I've said, alluding hesitantly to some of the more distinctly remembered details: everyone knew that Fräulein Wohlgast had lost her sweetheart in '71, in the war against France; he was said to have been a dashing officer, and she, in patriotic zeal, had vowed to mourn him for as long as she lived, "until the grave and beyond," forever reminding the world of the "infamy perpetrated not only against me but against us!" — and she wore dark gray clothes, no longer black, though every year the gray got lighter, until on a certain afternoon when, thanks to Mother's venomous outpouring, we arrived at the station in quite a state, crossing the splendid glass-covered and at that hour pleasantly cool stationhouse just as the squat engine and its four red cars pulled in, and she appeared in a stunning, lace-trimmed, lily-white dress.

By this time Mother's unanswered, bristling sentences were sticking out of Father like the arrows out of St. Sebastian in some romantic illustration, penetrating deep under the skin, into the flesh, and still quivering in the air: the only sentence he managed to squeeze out was something about turning back, but Mother pretended not to have heard that, and of course everything played into her hands, because there was no time to catch their breath here, either; once again they had to greet acquaintances, had to keep smiling; there was quite a gathering on the open platform, people coming to meet the new arrivals (there weren't that many anyway) and to enjoy the lively spectacle offered by this little marvel of modern science; they acted as if their brief afternoon stroll could be properly terminated only here. I cannot imagine what the spa's guests did for entertainment before this railroad line was built (it connected the charming old town of Bad Doberan, also the Prince's summer residence, with the lovely-sounding Kühlungsborn); anyway, the buzz of conversation died down and, as if sitting in theater boxes, everyone watched in fascination as nimble conductors threw open the doors, lowered the steps — ah, the moment of arrival! — watched the porters, too, as they vanished and reappeared in the clouds of steam emitted by the puffing, screeching engine, hurriedly unloading the heavy pieces of luggage; soon, though, after a few minutes of idle waiting, while words of greeting and farewell intermingled on the platform, at a signal from the stationmaster the steps would be pulled up, the doors slammed shut, and leaving behind the pleasant fatigue of arrival among those who had disembarked and the sad silence of distant longing among those who welcomed them, and with some more whistling and clanging, the engine's puffing gradually accelerating to a steady clatter, the whole brief show, like a momentary vision, would disappear around the nearest bend, and once more we would be left as we were, this time unmistakably by ourselves.

Peter van Frick was standing in the open door of one of the red railroad cars, the first to appear, and surveying the crowd on the platform, he noticed us right off — I felt and also saw that he did this, picking us out of the throng of friends and acquaintances who had come to welcome him — but then he immediately turned away, his face more serious and sullen than usual, his dark complexion more pallid; he was wearing a well-tailored traveling suit that made him look even taller and more slender; as he stepped gracefully off the train, one hand casually holding his hat and valise, with the other he quickly reached back to help somebody else down; who that was we couldn't yet tell, but a moment later there she was, none other than Fräulein Nora Wohlgast, yes, no doubt of it, dressed in white, like a bride; it must have been the first time I saw her in white (and, it must be said, as a result of the rapid and drastic turn of events, also the last): if Frick's arrival was considered an extraordinary event because of the delicate role he had played in exposing the recent double assassination attempt against the Kaiser, about which the vacationers at Heiligendamm had learned only in newspapers and whose precise details and wider ramifications they were now hoping to ascertain firsthand, well then, this dual appearance was an out-and-out sensation, bordering on scandal, though in light of his very special position and his momentary popularity people were willing enough to close their eyes and pretend either not to see what in fact they could not avoid seeing or to make believe it was mere coincidence, and in any event, the reputation of society's darlings is always enhanced, their superiority confirmed, by a little scandalous behavior; they rise above and rule us precisely because they cross boundaries we dare not, but the Fräulein! how could she have wound up on that train, when this very morning she had breakfasted with us at our regular table? and why in white all of a sudden? and so conspicuously white, to boot, which on account of her age she had no business wearing, for she was closer to thirty than to twenty! why this sartorial provocation which seemed so unlike her, why? could it be that she and that inveterate bachelor, the councillor, were secretly engaged, or might he have already married her? prompted by this flood of questions, I looked first at Mother, then at Father, hoping to read the answers on their faces, but Mother's face was unresponsive and Father's showed such shock and agitation that, without realizing why, I automatically grabbed his hand, as if to hold him back from doing something dreadful, and he let me, yielding helplessly, turning pale, ashen, though his eyes, bulging out as if mesmerized, kept staring at the couple who were unmistakably together; his mouth dropped open and stayed open, and all the while we were getting closer, for they were heading our way and we were moving toward them, and a moment later, as if pushed along by the rather exaggerated and overly enthusiastic shouts and exclamations, we found ourselves part of the colorful human ring surrounding Frick, as scores of unfinished, interrupted sentences clashed and tangled above our heads, as they all besieged him, of course, asking about his trip and expressing delight at seeing him, alluding to his "extremely exhausting work" that must have accounted for his "wan" complexion; in this platitudinous atmosphere, overheated by noise and mawkishness, no one could be expected to look at that other face, Father's foreboding countenance, not even Frick himself, but they all had to see and hear Father, who, having snatched his hand from my terrified grip, leaned very close to Fräulein Wohlgast's face and, though he might have liked to whisper, shouted, "What are you doing here?"

As if no emotion were powerful enough to penetrate the armor of appearances, there was no outburst and no scandal, nobody screamed and no one became violent, even if the propensity for sudden hysteria lying dormant in human nature may have warranted it, rather, it was as if Father's question had never been asked, or that it was the most natural question in the world put in the most natural way possible, although they knew only too well that Father wasn't, couldn't be, on intimate enough terms with Fräulein Wohlgast to permit himself such a question, and in public, too, using the familiar form of address! or could he be? was something dark and confusing being exposed here? for all I knew, it wasn't just the two of them but perhaps a curious threesome or, counting Mother, a foursome; yet no, it wasn't so, for no one seemed to notice anything, everyone finished their sentences and launched animatedly into new ones, assuring the purity of the proper social overtones produced by the music of their chatter; what is more, I could detect the effect of propriety even on myself, for I suddenly felt so faint I had the distinct impression that the scandal had already erupted, the abyss had opened up, and there was no escape; not only did I feel that we would be falling — that ominous feeling experienced so many times before — but that this was the fall itself, we were in the midst of it! I wanted so much to close my eyes and stop up my ears, but I could do nothing, the sense of propriety being stronger than I, and my having to remain in control, while as for Mother, her performance was simply brilliant: as Frick bowed slightly to kiss her hand, she could even bring herself to laugh heartily, gaily: "Oh, Peter, we are so delighted that you can be here at last! If not for those important affairs of state, we'd probably never forgive you for depriving us of your company for so long"; and in fact there was no stopping now, the situation rolled on: stepping before Father, smiling a self-satisfied smile over the answer he'd just given Mother—"And I shall do my best to make up for lost time" — Frick offered to shake Father's hand, no hugs on this occasion, of course, while Father, speaking even louder than his friend, said, "Affairs of state? Nonsense!" and rather than letting go of the privy councillor's hand grasped it even harder, staring into his eyes with an impenetrable look, and then lowering his voice to a whisper: "You mean a criminal affair, Herr Frick, don't you? which is not so hard to uncover, provided the assassination was well organized."

"You are a witty man," said Frick, laughing deliciously, as if he had just heard the most amusing jest, and once again the situation was saved; members of our little party were now ready to help things along, determined to ward off further attacks from Father, so their chattering grew louder, became a frantic hubbub, until an elderly, highly respected lady, who must have weathered quite a few storms in her time and had ample practice at saving the day, took Frick's arm and cried, "I am going to snatch you away from here, sir," and with that she jolted the whole company out of any lingering shock; becoming aware of the changed mood, people were ready to gloss over the momentary unpleasantness, though the word "scandal" must have still been buzzing in their heads, and though when Mother took Father's arm she seemed to be restraining him, which he needed, for he looked as if he was about to hit someone or start screaming, but the dowager chimed in again: "I know it is beastly of me, but what I have to say is important and should mitigate my rudeness— the Prince, you see, is waiting for you!" and the old lady's pleasantly tremulous voice rose above the din; by then our company began to move, treading on the crunchy gravel path leading to the white stationhouse, and only two of us were left behind, almost abandoned: Fräulein Wohlgast, who, still paralyzed from the earlier situation, could not take advantage of the improved, more favorable one, and I, of course, whose presence made absolutely no difference to anyone.

"Let's get out of here, and quick!" Father snapped, and promptly began walking with Mother in the opposite direction, but an unpleasant white apparition blocked their way, the Fräulein herself, who in this latest confusion somehow ended up in front of Mother and, having cast about in her stunned mind for a plausible explanation, seemed just at that very moment to have hit upon the answer: "You won't believe this, but after breakfast I felt like going for a long walk, and I didn't stop until I got as far as Bad Doberan, and who should I meet there?!" — her chatty tone in the circumstances sounded like an absurd parody—"You have behaved scandalously, Fräulein!" Mother said, with an air of superiority, looking calmly into her eyes, but then Father pushed Mother along, and the two of them swept the young lady out of the way; I hurried after them across the railroad tracks, as in complete silence and almost running, we let the forest trail lead us on, and only after making a detour long enough to count as an excursion, via the marsh, did we return to the spa, well after dark.

Oh, what a terrible night was to follow!

I was startled from my sleep by someone standing in the open terrace door behind the translucent curtain — or was it just a shadow, a ghost? — and thinking that even a flickering eyelid might be noticed, I didn't dare close my eyes again, even though it would have been much better not to see or hear what was to come; the terror of the previous afternoon returned, adding to my fear; and then the curtain did move, and a shadowy figure entered and hurried across the room, in the dark, a night without light, footsteps tapping on the bare floor, then muffled on the soft rug, and I recognized Mother in the shadowy figure, heard her reach the double door leading to the hallway; she must have put her hand on the door handle and even pressed it down, because a sharp click shattered this deepest silence of the night, in which the lazily rolling sea could barely be heard and even the pine trees had stopped whispering, but then apparently she changed her mind, crossed the room again, the high heels of her swansdown-trimmed slippers tapping resolutely, as though she knew exactly where she was going and why, she was wearing her flowing dressing gown, which she must have hurriedly thrown over her nightgown, I could hear the silky rustle; when she got back to the terrace door and stayed there motionless for a few seconds, I wanted to say something, but no sound would leave my throat, just as in a nightmare, except I knew I was fully awake; then cautiously, with the attentiveness of a spy, she pulled the curtain open, but instead of stepping out on the terrace she turned around quickly, hurried across the room again toward the double door leading to the hallway, pressed down hard on the handle, the sound was unmistakable, but the door didn't open, she turned the key, the lock clicked open, yet evidently she thought better of it; without venturing into the hallway, she headed back to the terrace, while the door left ajar produced a slight draft, making the curtains flutter in the dark; I sat up in bed.

"What happened?" I asked very quietly, perhaps too quietly, because of the shock, far greater than mere fright, that seized my neck and throat, but without responding — she may not even have heard me — Mother now walked out on the terrace, took a few steps, and, as if the irritatingly loud tapping of her slippers made her stop, rushed back into the room; "What happened?" I asked again, louder this time; and now she was at the front door again, opening it, and once more turning around, and at this point I simply had to jump out of bed, I had to try to help her.

Moving fast in opposite directions, our bodies collided, and for a moment we clung to each other in the middle of the dark room.

"What happened?"

"I knew it, for five years I've known it."

"What?"

"I knew it, for five years I've known it."

We were holding on to each other.

Her body was terribly rigid, I could feel the tension in it, and though for a brief moment she hugged me and I tried hard to yield to her by hugging her back, I sensed that our physical contact was of no help to her, that my eagerness was in vain, that though I could feel her she could not feel me, I might as well have been a table or a chair she was using to regain her balance and resolve, resolve bordering on hysteria, to propel her on to carry out her will, and still, not wanting to let her go, I pressed my body to hers, as if I knew precisely what she was about to do, what awful act I had to keep her from committing — it made no difference to me what it was, I had no clear idea what it might be, but my instincts told me to protect her and keep her from doing whatever it was she now seemed desperate enough to do — and it felt as though my persistence did affect her, as if she had finally recognized me as her son, as someone who belonged to her, and she bent down and kissed my neck passionately, almost biting it, but the next moment, as if having drawn strength from that kiss and from my quaking body, tore my clinging arms from her waist and pushed me away—"Unhappy boy!" she cried, and ran out the terrace door.

I ran after her.

Instead of heading for the wide staircase leading to the park, as one might have expected, she ran in the opposite direction, stopping at the door of the Fräulein's suite.

Candles were burning within, and their lambent light reached our feet.

The sensation that I was standing on my feet had never been so acute.

Nor the feeling that not only my eyes but my whole body was there only to absorb the sight before me.

I cannot honestly say that I didn't know what it all meant, but neither can I claim that I did.

Because a child doesn't merely have knowledge of what ought to take place at such moments but, shocking though it may be to admit it, may have already experienced it, when squeezing pleasure out of his own flesh; nevertheless, what I was seeing came as such a surprise I am not sure I could comprehend it.

Here the spectacle was created by two strange bodies.

Their nakedness gleamed on the bare floor.

With pieces of white garments strewn all about them, the Fräulein seemed somehow to be lying on her side, her knees drawn up almost to her breasts, her body bending into itself, turning her formidably ample buttocks to Father; seeing them in retrospect, with experienced eyes, those buttocks seem extremely beautiful and "turning to" a most inadequate phrase; she was proffering, tendering, serving up her buttocks to Father, while he more or less squatted, knelt above her, one hand frantically clutching her loose dark hair, as he slammed against her, the convex hollow of his loins thrusting in, clinging to, then retracting from the concave double bulge of her behind; he was inside the perfectly enclosed body, able to ravage it freely, powerfully, yet most exquisitely; today I know how that is — in this position not only can one's member slip to the deepest or, I should say, highest reaches, but the sensitized foreskin, the bulbous glans, the bulging blood vessels, while rubbing against the stiffened clitoris and caressing the vulva, can swab and scrub the tight yet slippery cave of the vagina, making the erection so tumescent, so throbbing, that the organ, having reached the mouth of the womb, the last obstacle, can fill the hollow so fully, so perfectly, that one can no longer tell what is ours and what is hers; in this odd position, therefore, violent entry and tender lovemaking can merge and become one; could anyone wish for pleasure more intense? but on that occasion all I could see was that Father's spine was bending sharply, his buttocks spread almost as if he were about to defecate, and he was supporting himself with his free hand: in the moments of rhythmic disengagement his enormous, slightly updrawn testicles became visible, and then he would lunge again, covering completely the spot that induced such bubbling pleasure in both of them; the Fräulein squealed in a piercing, high-pitched voice while Father's mouth opened — and this frightened me because, as if unable to close it, he let out a deep rattle, the tip of his tongue stuck out, and his wide-open eyes stared into space, but of course I couldn't connect the shriek and the rattle to the carnal delight I was witnessing, because when Father reached the highest point of penetration, when he seemed to find his place at last, he froze, and his whole body, covered with thick patches of black hair, was shaken by an uncontrollable and insatiable trembling; still holding her by the hair, he kept raising and banging her head against the floor, and though this produced in her the most pleasurable shrieks, she also began squirming underneath him, as if trying to escape, so that dropping back from his climax, Father's loins resumed their gentle but firm thrusts, which she greeted with softer, more intimate squeals; then Father yanked her head up and knocked it against the floor with a resounding bang.

If at this moment my enjoyment proved far greater than my surprise, if, forgetting Mother's presence, I focused all my senses on this spectacle and even considered myself fortunate to be witnessing it, it was not a child's openmouthed curiosity that was responsible, or the undeniable fact that I was already privy to such secrets, thanks to Count Stollberg, my playmate at Heiligendamm, a boy just a few years my senior; the truth is that many different, hitherto buried desires, cruel impulses, and inclinations had to clash together into some harmony, as if exposing me, as if the Fräulein, with her squeals of delight, had caught me in the act! and what I saw became an illumination of the senses, a revelation that had to do not only with me or with an abstract knowledge of the act or even with my playmate, whom I came across in the swampy reed bed one day, spread out on the soft soil, playing with himself, or even that much to do with Father, but directly with the object of my admiration and affection: Fräulein Wohlgast.

Could it be that those nocturnal escapades had had consequences, after all? those many nights when on our shared terrace I wanted to be alone but was nevertheless happy to find her and have her draw me to her body redolent with the warmth of her bed and of her restlessness?

Beauty radiated from her body, even though this beauty lay not in the shapeliness of her form and not in the regularity of her features but in her flesh, one might say, in the hot exhalation of her skin, even though in purely aesthetic terms she obviously did not measure up to an abstract ideal; her attraction proved stronger than that exercised by so-called perfect beauties: how lucky it is that we trust our fingers more than we do some insipid aesthetics; I hasten to add that even Mother had not escaped the Fräulein's confusingly profound influence and though always willing to accept tiresome rules, in this case Mother also chose to trust her own judgment; she was quite enamored of the Fräulein, indeed idolized her, even fantasized about being as intimate friends with her as Father was with Frick, and was affected by many of the Fräulein's physical features— the sparkling, impertinent brown eyes, the gleaming, darkly Mediterranean, almost Gypsy-like complexion, with skin taut over wide cheekbones, the tiny quivering nostrils, and the full cherry lips that looked as if a ritual sword had split them in half not just horizontally but vertically as well— was stimulated, galvanized in her company, and in spite of Father's frequent and somewhat teasing warning, "The Fräulein is quite common, really," she put up with her loudness, closed her eyes to her uncouth lack of refinement, and did not seem bothered by the limited intellect whose physical manifestation may have been the low, flat brow which the Fräulein not only failed to offset with a measure of self-discipline but added to with her licentiousness; the body lying on the floor I also knew well— the small, hard, pointed breasts and the waist, which her cleverly cut dresses made seem much slenderer than it was, and the voluptuous hips, which those same dresses tended to overemphasize — I knew this body well, because on those nights, when driven by insomnia and restlessness she appeared on the terrace and embraced me maternally, with an exaggerated tenderness I now know was meant for Father, I came to be familiar with it, precisely in its disproportionate and unconcealed perfection; she didn't bother with a robe then, and the sheer silk of her nightgown conveyed everything unhindered, I could even feel her soft bush below whenever my hand strayed there, as if by accident, and I could inhale the heavy fragrance in which I sank and sank.

Thus far, and no farther!

Propriety and good taste demand that we pause now in our recollections.

Because Mother, emitting what sounded like a moan, collapsed in a faint.

Girls

The garden was huge, like a park, shady, mildly fragrant in the warm summer air; pungent smell of pines, their resin dripping from green cones that snap quietly as they grow; firm rosebuds resplendent in red, yellow, white, and pink hues; and yes, a single, ruffled, and slightly singed petal that could open no further, now almost ready to fall; and the tall, rearing lilies with their wasp-enticing nectar; violet, maroon, and blue cups of petunias fluttering in the slightest breeze; long-stemmed snapdragons swaying more indolently in the wind; and along the footpaths, great patches of foxgloves luxuriating in the flaming brilliance of their own colors; opalescent shimmer of dewy grass in the morning sun; clusters of thick shrubbery arranged in rows — elder- and spindleberry bushes, lilacs, intoxicatingly sweet hyacinths, and, in the deepening shadows, under the forsythias, hawthorn and hazel bushes, the damp rot in which green ivy runs riot, exuding a sour-sweet odor, tendrils and shoots creeping over fences and walls, wrapping around tree trunks, fine clinging roots covering everything in sight in the effort to protect and propagate the mildewy decay on which ivy feeds and which it keeps producing; it's easy to see this plant as a symbol of life: in its dank profusion it consumes twigs, branches, grass, everything, then every autumn lets itself be buried in a red grave of fallen leaves, only to revive again in the spring, rearing its waxen head, navigating atop long, hardy stems; green lizards and pale brown snakes once used to enjoy the cool shade here, and fat black slugs traced their convoluted paths with their ooze, which turns white when dry and cracks when touched; when I think of this garden today, I know there is nothing left of it, they cleared the shrubbery, cut down most of the trees, tore down the gazebo with its green trellis and pink rambling roses, carried off the rock garden, putting the stones to some other use and destroying the vegetation in it: the ferns, the stonecrop, the blue and yellow irises; the lawn went to seed and is now burned out in spots; the white garden chairs probably rotted away and fell apart; the stone statue of Pan blowing his pipe, porous with age, that stayed lying on its side in the grass after a storm knocked it off its pedestal may have been thrown into somebody's basement, and even the pedestal disappeared; the plaster ornaments on the façade of the main house, the openmouthed goddesses rising out of seashells over the windows and the decorative scrolls of the fake Grecian columns were all knocked down and the glass veranda walled in; and during one of the reconstructions they even tore the creeping vine off the walls, the favored haunt of ants, beetles, and other insects; but no matter how much I know about all these changes, and know this garden now lives only in my memory, I can still sense every leaf stirring in it, every smell, every ray of light, the direction of every breeze, know them as well as I did then, long ago, and if I wish, it's summer again, a silent summer afternoon.

And there stands the boy I once was, slight, fragile, not ill-proportioned, even if he feels clumsy and ugly and is therefore reluctant to undress completely even in the summer heat; if he can help it, he won't take off even his shirt and will certainly keep on his undershirt, and prefers to wear long pants even in summer, would rather sweat though he finds the strong smell of perspiration repellent; today, of course, we smile at all this and note sadly that we are never fully aware of our own beauty, which can be appreciated only by others, and we can do so only nostalgically, in retrospect.

There I am, then, standing on the sloping garden path, and it's one of those rare moments when I'm not preoccupied with myself or, more precisely, am so taken up with anticipation that I myself have become an actor in a scene that follows an unknown script, and for a change, I don't even mind not having my shirt and trousers on, and stand here in only my blue shorts so faded from repeated washings they are almost white; I disregard all that, even though I know she'll soon be here.

I am simply there, along with the garden, the street, and the woods beyond the street; I am holding a large slice of bread smeared thick with lard and covered with slices of green pepper. I cut up the pepper myself, careful to leave the veins that make the pepper hot attached to the stem. When I lift the bread to my mouth, ready to bite, I have to press down on the strips of pepper to make sure they don't slip off — of course they always do — but not too hard, or else I squeeze the fat off the bread and get it all over my face.

The sky has turned hazy gray from the heat, the sun is beating down, it may be the hottest hour of the day, not even insects bother to stir, yet on my skin, still moist from sleep, I seem to sense a breeze, very gentle and cool, that blows nowhere else but on this steep footpath.

The lizards have disappeared, the birds are silent.

The garden path leads to an ornate wrought-iron gate leaning against carved stone pillars, past which, on the street, fine shadows are quivering, and beyond them begins the dense woods where the cooler breeze seems to be coming from; I stand there in a daze, enjoying the breeze playfully tickling my skin, but I am also attentive and, let's be honest, aware that it is my self-esteem making me pretend I'm in a dazed, dreamlike state.

If I weren't pretending, I'd have to admit that I have been waiting for her, just as I was waiting for her when in my comfortably darkened room I pretended to be deeply engrossed in my reading; waiting for her even as I fell asleep and waiting when startled out of sleep, waiting for hours, days, weeks, even in the kitchen when I was spreading lard on my slice of rye bread, cutting the pepper, and looking again and again at the loudly ticking alarm clock — I lost count of how many times I looked, as if by chance, glancing casually at the dial, hoping she would also look at her watch just then, at that very second, and get up and leave; she comes this way every day at this hour, at two-thirty, so it cannot be mere coincidence, but all the same, I cannot erase from my mind the terrifying thought that it's all a mistake, that she's not coming this way because of me, that it is only a coincidence, and that she passes by here only because she feels like it.

A few more minutes and then I might start walking toward the fence as if I had some important business there; I give her a few more minutes, a half hour at most, long enough for her to feign indifference and decide to be late, just as I sometimes, to preserve the appearance of my independence, pretend I'm not standing behind the bushes, waiting; I try to ascertain how much time has elapsed, it could be little or much, although I always hope it's little and passing quickly, ever since that one time when she didn't show up at all and I waited until evening, I couldn't help it, kept waiting by the fence way past dark, but she didn't come, and since then I know how fathomless time can be when one is waiting, when one absolutely must wait.

And then she appears.

Like every moment we want to be significant, this one, too, turns out to be insignificant; we have to remind ourselves afterward that what we have been waiting for so eagerly is actually here, has finally come, and nothing has changed, everything is the same, it's simply here, the waiting is over.

By then I found myself standing among the bushes close to the fence, not far from the gate; this was the place, my post, directly opposite the trail that curved gently, almost surreptitiously, out of the woods and onto the open road, concealed by dense shrubbery and the sagging branches of a giant linden tree, a road that was always empty at this hour, so if I stood guard here at the fence, I couldn't possibly miss her, and I did watch every second, my body cutting a passage in the bushes where I got to know every single twig and branch that kept snapping in my face, where I could follow her until I'd bump into the fence of the neighboring garden, and my gaze could follow her even farther, until the red and blue of her comically swaying skirt disappeared in the green woods, but that took a good long time; the only way she could surprise me was by not coming on the wood trail — and she did make sure that our silent game did not become too regular or predictable: sometimes she made a detour and came up the street, appearing on the left where the street suddenly begins to climb and then, just as sharply, dips, a roadway that had once been paved but by now formed an almost continuous crevice because of cracks and potholes caused by sudden freezes, but her trickery was to no avail, I heard her every time, for in that infinite silence, where beneath such irregular and accidental noises as the rustling of leaves, the twittering of birds, a barking dog, or an indefinable human cry, even the keenest, most sensitive ear had trouble making out the uniform murmur and buzz of the distant city, I was familiar with every last detail of both sound and silence, even with the subtle interplay of the two, a highly developed sensitivity to sound that in no small measure was due to my waiting for her; she might decide to come up the street, but she could not fool me, the crunch of her footsteps gave her away, it could be no one else, I knew those steps too well.

That day she chose the wooded path after all. She stepped out onto the road and stopped. If my memory captures her image precisely, and I think it has, she was wearing a red skirt with white polka dots and a white blouse, both of them heavily starched and ironed to a shine, so that the rigid fullness of the blouse concealed the mounds of her small breasts and the stiff cotton skirt swished against her skinny knees. Each piece of her meager wardrobe displayed or concealed different parts of her body, and for this reason I had to keep track of each item — skirts, dresses, blouses, everything that she herself, while dressing and possibly even thinking of me, must have considered extremely important; craning her uncovered neck, she looked around, slowly, carefully, the only movement she allowed herself; peering out from under the mask of her coy reserve, first she looked to the left, then to the right, and while turning her head, her glance would come to rest on me as if by accident, very often for no more than a fraction of a second, and then I tried in vain to catch her eye; at other times she looked at me more boldly for quite a few seconds, and once in a great while for an absurdly long time, but of this I'll have more to say later — in any case, I knew her eyes were looking for me, because if it happened that I wasn't standing at my usual place, if, say, I dropped down on my stomach or stood behind a tree so she would not notice me right away and I could extract some small advantage thereby, then her gaze grew uncertain, her face showed the deep disappointment which I hoped to wheedle out of her with my little game of hide-and-seek, and which, given her reserve and aloofness, could be considered blatant flirtatiousness; one single glance a day was my due, nothing more, while I stood helpless behind the fence, in the stifling shade of the bushes.

She wasn't beautiful, a statement that needs immediate clarification, for with mixed shame and regret I had to admit this even to myself while, however, she did seem beautiful to me, and once she disappeared in the bend of the street I almost felt I had to be ashamed in front of certain people that the girl I had fallen in love with was not beautiful, was ugly, or, however charitably we'd want to put it, not very beautiful; in any case, the doubt, the inexplicable shame was strong, and since I spent so many days in agonized waiting, I couldn't protest, couldn't prevaricate, in the end had to admit to myself and to say out loud, to shout it to the world— in the hope of regaining my freedom I screamed into the air that I was in love, was in love with her, but only the shouting itself made me happy; when I was through, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that now I would have to start waiting again, and go on waiting until two-thirty, and when she finally did come, I'd have to wait for her to be gone so that I could wait for her the next day, and that really seemed perverse and even more senseless than trying to avoid meeting Krisztián only to lessen the pain of seeing him.

But if things had to be this way, if I had to see her, then why couldn't she be beautiful at least, that's what I would have wished, for if she were beautiful, then her beauty would have lingered in me even after she was gone and I wouldn't have to be ashamed about my feelings: her beauty in some way would absolve me, I thought; as it was, I was forever entangled in the same agony — today I would call it the agony of longing for beauty, an agony so dark and dismal it must be hidden from the eyes of strangers, just as I had to conceal my love for Krisztián — for different reasons, of course — and still he managed to humiliate me, because my silent love for him made me memorize his quick gestures, his awkward smiles, and his wild laughter, his untouchable sadness, the transparent flash of his green eyes and the nervous twitch of his muscles, and not only did I absorb all this but I made it my own, so that he could surface in me anytime, in the most unexpected situations, as if replacing my body with his and pretending I was he; thus, with a single imagined gesture, look, or smile he could destroy anything that might be very important to me but also help me with problems I would have found hard to solve on my own, so that his constant presence was two-faced, benevolent, or hostile, but always unpredictable; he never left me, he was my crutch, my secret model, almost as if I no longer existed or did only as his shadow: and he was here now, hanging about me, drifting in and out, shrugging, grinning, pretending slyly not to notice me yet watching me all the same; I may have found this girl terribly exciting, her very sight may have swept away my fatuous doubts, but I was not alone, not the only one looking at her, and even if strictly speaking I was, I couldn't form a clear opinion based strictly on my own feelings but was of two minds, influenced by a critical faculty that, in matters of beauty, I found eminently competent; in truth, whose judgment could I trust more than his?

In the meantime, it was still I who was watching her — who else could it be? — I who was waiting for her, happy when she showed up, and I who have seen no more profoundly exciting face and body since, or, to be more precise, ever since and in every woman who appeals to me, I seem to be looking always for what I finally got from her — nothing she actually gave me, but this nothing was painfully real, and later I tried to fill it without even knowing it; today I know that it was beauty, her own unique perfection, which every day she revealed to me, and only me, if only for a few moments, for what is beauty if not the involuntary giving away of what is hidden even from ourselves? and if in spite of this I still couldn't consider her beautiful, then strangely enough it was only because, despite all appearances, I couldn't ever be alone with her, not even for a moment; there were always others standing with me in the bushes who interfered, held down my arms, gave me goose pimples, warned me not to yield to my feelings — maybe they did the right thing, I say philosophically today, mindful of the pain that teaches us what we can and cannot do; and he wasn't the only one who argued against her — absurdly enough, I even experienced the jealousy my phantom Krisztián would have felt, had he loved me, about the real Livia, and strangely, very strangely, there were several of us inside me who were watching her — I, who would have loved to love this girl, wasn't alone, and even if I wasn't fully conscious of this at the time, the other boys were there, too, disturbing me, standing behind me, watching the same girl, and they didn't think she was beautiful, didn't even think she was ugly — because I believe that besides me no one had ever even noticed her before.

I was the first and only one, and this couldn't but make an impression on her.

I knew she also was ashamed of her ugliness; everything about her spoke of this: her walk, her skin, her compulsively clean dresses, her shy cautiousness, her bashfulness; yet this did not make her weak, but, on the contrary, perhaps made her beautiful, and she let me understand with an earnestness bordering on defiance that, though she might think herself the ugliest of girls she must still come by my spot — and let's add that her defenselessness was made even more emphatic, almost absurd, by the stoic dignity of the poor; all the same, a curious shiver of excitement ran through me when I thought of the cellar where she lived.

She was small, slight of build, fragile, and almost always kept her head lowered, so that her great brown eyes were forever looking up at things, unblinking, and — I think the best word to use here would be deeply— and her short-cropped chestnut hair was held together with two clips, two white butterflies, to keep it from falling into her eyes, which definitely made her look awkward and little-girlish, but I liked her like that; her nicely rounded forehead was visible, testifying to the care her parents must have given her, the concern that she look neat and well-groomed; I could see how her father, while sitting in his porter's cubicle, drew her between his knees and with a handkerchief moistened with spittle wiped something off her face — her father was the school janitor and also the sexton of a nearby church, a skinny, blond-haired man with a little mustache and artificially curled hair, and they lived in the basement of the school; somebody told me that her mother, whom I saw a couple of times emerging from the dark basement loaded down with pots and bags, was helping people out with leftovers from the school lunchroom, and she also fed her own family from there — she was said to be a Gypsy, and she had the kind of shiny rosy brown skin which the summer sun turns just a shade darker, though its winter paleness may be even lovelier.

The snow was almost gone when all this started between us, on a day notable for another reason: the thaw had come late that year after a hard winter; what the sun melted during the day froze over again in the cold of the night, and only gradually, slowly, was it becoming clear that the thaw was finally setting in, that spring was here; first to melt were the cushions of snow on the rooftops and the snowcaps on chimneys, along with the fluffy white strips on the tree branches which wind had hardened into crystals; long icicles sprouting from the eaves during the night dripped during the day, and the cool water made the snow cover around the houses sag; you could break off and lick the fine, cold icicles, specially flavored by rotting leaves in the drainpipes and the rust of the pipes themselves — we loved them; a thin armor of ice hardened on the ground at night, ideal for walking and sliding — it snapped and cracked under our feet, and we could leave footprints in it until, after a few mild days, everything came to life and began dripping, snapping, drying, crackling, trickling, flowing, and the birds began to sing; so the day was one of those wonderfully drippy, mild, clear days with a perfectly cloudless blue sky, and in the long morning recess we all, class after class, had to march down to the gym, line up, and stand in silence, looking straight ahead, not moving, not turning our heads; but impressive as the solemnity of the ostentatious memorial ceremony may have been, you still managed to see the soothing blue expanse beyond the tall narrow windows — without turning your head, of course — from the corner of your eyes, standing in a silence alive with stifled unrest; on the gym stage, its red curtain drawn, all the teachers stood — silent, of course, and motionless.

This was the hour of Stalin's funeral, when the embalmed body was being taken from the marble hall where he had lain in state to the mausoleum.

I imagined it to be a vast hall, enormous and almost completely dark, so huge in fact that it might better be called an indoor arena, a marble hall, yes, I savored the name, but no ordinary huge hall, like a railroad terminal, for instance, but one in which marble columns stand like trees in a dense forest, reaching to the heights, and up there in the heights, it is also dark, the space so immense that the coffered ceiling cannot be seen; no footsteps are heard here, no one may enter and no one dare enter, lest the loud echoes of his steps disturb the silence; and there, at the far end of the hall or arena, he is lying on his bier — I pictured a simple black platform, a bed actually, which one presumes is there but can't really see because not enough light comes through the narrow doorway to illuminate the place; only the marble glimmers softly here and there, the grayish-brown, delicately veined marble, the mirror-smooth columns, the floor, there are no candles, no lights; the image was so vivid in my mind that I can easily recall it even today, with no subsequent, perhaps ironic embellishments; I had the feeling that the whole world partook in the silence, even animals, sensing the ominous human stillness, falling silent in astonishment, for his death was not a passing away but the ultimate, absolute crescendo of solemnity, the outcry of respect, joy, longing, and love that could not be expressed before with such force — only now, in this breathtaking death; and the vision I had was not the least bit altered by the fact that in the gym we could hear the happy chirping of sparrows fluttering around in the eaves and the indifferent cawing of crows; and then I tried to imagine this vast dense silence as the stillness of all the world's humans and animals congealed into one enormous, terrifying silence, tried to gauge it, find some appropriate unit of measurement for it, since we knew of course that at this hour nothing must stir outside either; all traffic came to a halt, cars and trams and trains between stations stopped, people cleared off the streets, and if anyone happened to be out when the sirens began to wail they had to freeze, remain rooted to the spot; and just as different kinds of noises can blend, as the noise of a whole city from a distance can be perceived as a coherent, uniform hum, the different silences had somehow to blend into one, so that in the end it could be heard even in that dark marble hall, the knowledge that the whole world fell silent must penetrate even that vast interior, though he could no longer hear, not even this silence; and what must it be like, I wondered, when one can no longer hear even silence, to be dead? at which point my neat mental picture became rather confused, because I knew he wasn't just dead, not just dead like anybody else, lowered into the grave to rot away, but was different — a secret ointment would preserve and consecrate him, though the whole embalming business seemed so murky and incomprehensible that it was better not to think about it at all; hard as I tried to get my mind to leave this forbidden territory, it obsessed me more than his death, and I had to think about it all the time, about the mysterious embalming process administered only to the greatest of the great, the pharaohs of Egypt; when finally I asked Grandfather about it — perhaps I thought he knew everything because he was so tight-lipped — and also wanted to know why only the pharaohs and Stalin, what possible connection there may have been between their greatness and his, I felt a little guilty because I suspected his answer would be biting and sarcastic, he talked like that about everything; and I was right; rather than allaying my moral uneasiness about embalming, his answer made it even more acute: "Oh, that's a splendid invention!" he exclaimed with a sudden laugh, and, as always when he began to speak, whipped off his glasses: "Well, it's like this, you see, first they take out all the internal organs that decompose easily, like the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, the heart, the intestines, the spleen, the bile duct, let's see what else, oh yes, the brain from the skull, if there was any to begin with, they take it all out; but first they pump the blood out of all the veins, provided it hasn't clotted, because blood is also a perishable item, and when there are no soft parts left, I think they even take the eyeballs out of the sockets, so only the skin, the flesh, and the bones are left, the empty shell of the man, then they treat the body with some sort of chemical, inside and out, but don't ask me what, because I don't know, and after that all they have to do is stuff it and sew it up, carefully, as your grandmother does when she stuffs the chicken for Sunday dinner; well, that's about it," all of which Grandfather said without wondering why I asked the question or who I had in mind, and if he did wonder, he didn't seem very interested, for he said no more, mitigated his brief monologue with not a single word or gesture but simply fell silent, the smile vanishing from his lips and again becoming as glum and matter-of-fact as he had been on the day of Stalin's death, when I had been looking for some black material suitable for draping the school bulletin board and the only thing I could find was one of my grandmother's old-fashioned silk slips, which I proceeded to cut up, unstitching the lace trimming and the straps; seeing me do this, Grandfather remarked, "While you're at it, why don't you take along one of her undies, too?" and as if his next gesture was meant to indicate he was returning to the silent world where he spent most of his days, he shoved his glasses back onto his nose and turned away, taking with him the glance that only a moment ago had seemed interested and cheerful.

But how could anyone in his right mind even conceive of such an answer — it sounded so blasphemous, not just the part about cutting open the great man's stomach and taking out his organs but also the way Grandfather talked about it, so flippantly and irreverently! — surely if there was no way to preserve the body, then it would be best to keep quiet about the whole outrageous procedure, pretend it wasn't true, pretend it never happened, yes, we should have all kept quiet about it, just as I had to keep quiet about, not admit even to myself, what Krisztián had said when we were told of the unexpected, fatal illness, as though the mere fact that I overheard the statement was in itself a grave offense.

My overhearing Krisztián was indeed accidental, merely accidental, and I clung to the word as if for a good reason; yes, of course, that's what it was, an accident to be quickly forgotten, along with so much else, because if I hadn't happened to be the monitor that day and hadn't had to go to the bathroom to dampen the sponge, or if I had left the classroom just a few minutes earlier or later — but that's exactly what made it an accident! — then I wouldn't have heard what he said, he could have said it and I wouldn't have known about it, after all, many things had been said that, fortunately, I knew nothing about, but it did happen, and I did hear it, and almost as if looking for a pretext to avoid it, I kept reenacting the scene in my mind, obsessively, for days, hoping it could be forgotten like everything else, but I couldn't forget it and I didn't find an acceptable pretext either; on the contrary, the episode reminded me of my responsibilities; it seemed irrevocable, not an accident at all but something done willfully, like a retaliation; but then I could take my own revenge, although that was also a trap, because taking revenge would also expose me, my lies, and my futile attempts to ignore everything that had to do with Krisztián, to treat him like air, less even than air, as if he were nothing! to wish him out of my life, as if I had killed him.

And the idea of killing him wasn't a passing fancy but one I thought about, toyed with, worked out the details of: I planned to steal Father's pistol because he had once taught me how to load it and how to handle it, I felt very confident about the technical details of the planned murder: I planned to steal the pistol, which he kept in his desk drawer and once a month cleaned with a rag dipped in kerosene, which blackened his slender fingers, so if he wanted to look up while explaining something to me, he could use only the back of his hand to sweep the hair out of his eyes — it was his cool blue eyes, the penetrating smell of kerosene, and the rather simple rules about handling the pistol that one Sunday afternoon paved the way to my murderous impulse, which I could respond to quite rationally, since I thought the only thing left to be worked out was how to cover up the traces; but now this stupid accident, which I had tried so hard to ignore, frustrated all my designs, exposed my murderous fantasies, revealing to me that I was far too weak and cowardly to become Krisztián's murderer, for I even lacked the courage to report him, for God's sake, after he had inadvertently given me the perfect opportunity, and though the possibility of turning him in did occur to me, of course, I rejected it as soon as I thought of it, for I knew that that would make me unacceptable to myself, that I'd surely feel like a lousy little stool pigeon.

I did feel like a stool pigeon even though I didn't do anything, dreaded even to think about doing anything, wouldn't even tell my mother about it, though I'd have loved to unburden myself, feared being unable to follow the advice she'd give me about how to resolve my quandary; I decided to say nothing, but she must have sensed something and even asked if anything was wrong; no, nothing, I said, since I was also afraid that I might get Grandfather into trouble, because the two reactions, his and Krisztián's, were closely connected in my mind, one as if preconditioned by the other — if Grandfather hadn't prepared the ground, then Krisztián's comment wouldn't have seemed so remarkable, but I knew that when the boys — the friends! — were by themselves they talked of things they'd never mention in front of me; a whole range of opinions and judgments, a tight circle of confidences was and always had been permanently closed to me, and Grandfather's views also belonged to that circle, which I accidentally, unwittingly penetrated and I was now aware of and therefore couldn't simply block out, if only because of my smoldering, tormenting jealousy: this being so, the unwanted knowledge alone, the secret knowledge of what to me were unacceptable judgments, was enough to make me a stool pigeon.

They must have thought I'd watched them go into the bathroom for their conference and waited for the right moment to burst in on them. Naturally, I noticed Krisztián first. He was standing in front of the tar-covered wall of the urinal, his legs wide apart, but what a pose, even while urinating! — one hand on his hip, gracefully bending back his wrist, and his other hand holding his penis, but not like children who copy the gentle touch of their mother's hand, holding their weenie at the base with two fingers, a bit clumsily since the last drops can never be properly shaken out that way and pee always gets on your fingers or your pants, but in the grownup way, in fact just like a grownup, in a backhanded sort of way, grasping his tool between his thumb and his other fingers, loosely, the little finger a bit apart from the rest, away from the stream, cupping his penis in his hand as one would a cigarette in windy weather, and this could have been taken as a sign of sensible modesty, if he hadn't at the same time been thrusting out his hips in such an indecently sensuous manner and spreading his legs so wide apart that his posture seemed to indicate — to whom? to himself? to us? — that he could take pleasure even in this act, could urinate shamelessly and, what's more, had turned it into a fashion that others imitated, and not just the boys in his group but everybody in the class, myself included, though his brazen, open enjoyment was his alone, others couldn't duplicate it; when I opened the door, with the dry chalky eraser in my hand, I noticed Krisztián in this familiar pose, which seemed even more casual because he was talking to Szmodits, who was peeing next to him and talking loud enough to be heard by Prém, waiting in line behind him, and even by Kálmán Csúzdi, who was leaning against the doorpost, smoking; what I really felt like doing at that moment was backing out of the bathroom, but I couldn't, because Kálmán Csúzdi had noticed me, so I walked in, and Krisztián, perhaps because he didn't hear the door open or simply ignored it, went on to finish his sentence: "so finally this sonofabitch is gonna croak, too!" just as, after a brief hesitation, I closed the door behind me.

Prém, a stocky dark-skinned boy, was like an amiable courtier who went everywhere with Krisztián, his wise, all-knowing, and all-forgiving gentle brown eyes seeming always in search of opportunities to be of service to him, and though he was just as nice to me as he was to Krisztián and, as far as I could tell, to everyone else, I felt toward him a deep and implacable hostility bordering on revulsion, and no wonder, considering he had achieved without pain or effort what I didn't have the courage, skill, and, possibly, playfulness to achieve; their bond was refined to the most subtle form of equality, precisely the kind I longed for, like brothers, like twins, even a little indifferent to each other since their relationship was arranged by nature and therefore they had nothing to add to it, also like lovers, since no matter how far apart the two faces moved, they seemed to be able to maintain a link, each always referring in some way to the other, always aware of each other's presence; all the same, Prém, the smaller of the two, was clearly Krisztián's servant (in such relationships the smaller is always the servant) — Prém now let out a full-mouthed guffaw, as if Krisztián had cracked a hilarious joke, even though the sentence had a rather ominous ring, an anxious undertone; I wouldn't have been surprised if Krisztián had smacked him for his too-ready laugh — he sometimes did that, knowing that an underling's exaggerated zeal can detract from rather than increase his superior's authority and therefore deserves punishment; I especially hated Prém's mouth — and those eyes! I hated the soft, alluring submissiveness in those wide-open, slightly bulging dark eyes with their thick lashes — oh that mouth! wild, darkly, savagely red, the lower lips a bit protuberant, in itself not exactly ugly, except that in the smallness of his face it seemed exaggerated and unnatural, and as if he himself were aware of its exceptional size, and of the attractiveness that could not be denied him, he had the habit of licking his lips with the tip of his tongue, taking real pleasure in doing it; his manner of speaking was unusual, too, always leaning over, speaking softly, never looking straight into his listener's eyes but aiming for one of the ears, since he didn't so much speak his words as murmur them, whispered little monologues into one's ears.

Yet I don't think it was only these inane jabberings that amused Krisztián, but also the surprise and befuddlement evoked by Prém's little pranks, which he followed with paternal solicitude, although Prém chose his victims according to his own inscrutable logic: he'd scurry down the hall or saunter alongside the classroom desks, stop abruptly in front of a classmate, lean over with a confident air, and, with a fractured sentence that was but the start of his ingratiating whispering, evoke immediate and intense curiosity or clear consternation; pretending to pay little heed to the response, which he left to Krisztián watching from a distance, he'd just look at his victim very tenderly and begin again: "Sweet little scumbag, have you heard, it's those Hungarian Fascists again, the ones who've been holed up since the war — they broke out of the hole again, it was on the radio last night and again this morning, crazy isn't it, to come out of the hole—" and then he'd stop and fall silent, and the startled query would come: "But what hole?" "Why, your asshole," he'd whisper, and move on as softly and stealthily as he had come; but now, in the bathroom, it was Kálmán Csúzdi who was looking at me, his eyes reddened from the hollow-filtered Russian cigarette dangling from his lips, sizing me up as he would a strange, slightly repulsive object, somewhat sternly, ready to check my every move, sly blue eyes with pale blond lashes in his bright, chubby face, his hands stuck in his pockets; he came to the bathroom only to smoke and be with his friends — his cigarette would soon be passed around, I knew they always shared it — and with his stern attention to me he seemed also to be watching over the others, accentuating their togetherness as if letting me know that any one of them might have said whatever Krisztián had said, they were so completely in agreement; and when the door finally clicked shut, and first Szmodits then Prém turned to me, and Krisztián, without changing his position, looked straight into my eyes, I knew something was going to happen.

The sentence had been uttered, couldn't be taken back, and there was no doubt to whom it referred, the laughter confirmed that.

And if Krisztián had not looked into my eyes the way he did, had he not stood there in that inimitably shameless pose, I'd probably have pretended that I didn't see or hear anything, and, protecting myself from him, would have simply wetted the sponge and gone, without so much as looking again at them, but the blatant openness and provocative artlessness of his stare proved to be an emotional rape against which I immediately had to react, though I'd have preferred not to, my self-esteem demanding it, asserting itself independently, it seemed, without regard for my conscious will; "What did you say?" I asked very quietly, staring back at him, and to hear my voice so calm was such a shock that I was immediately gripped by anxious fear, and when I continued I heard my voice, hoarse and much louder, saying, "Who's supposed to croak?"

He didn't answer, in the uncomfortable silence it was as if I had finally risen above him, and I stepped closer to him, my eyes confidently locked on his, but then something happened that I should and would have anticipated, had not the preceding moment made me so self-assured: completely by surprise, Prém's face appeared between us, one could say that he slipped his most enchanting smile between our two faces, and as I still looked into Krisztián's eyes I was forced to see Prém's bulging eyes, too, and his lips, which he was licking sensuously with the tip of his tongue, and had to hear his voice whispering, "Little snitch, you know how big a horse's prick is? as big as Csúzdi's!" By then Kálmán Csúzdi had already pushed himself away from the door, and his voice was much stronger, huskier: "You can have Prém's dick for lunch!" and at this point, according to the unwritten rules of the game, they should have roared with laughter to lessen the impact of their group performance, but they didn't laugh.

The silence grew more oppressive, as though a shared common fear lay at the bottom of it, made every clever mediation futile, neutralized their numerical advantage, at once confirming and casting doubt on my own superiority, a silence that Krisztián finally broke as he turned to the wall again to fix his pants; "A little more refinement, boys," he said, which may have surprised them more than me, and created an even more troubled silence.

Not knowing what to do next, I suddenly felt the sponge in my hand, which was the only thing that could help now, to step up to the faucet and wet the sponge, after all, that's what I had come in here for.

But when I turned around I couldn't seem to prove to them, not so simply, that that was the only reason I'd come into the bathroom, and all four of them were staring at me, motionless.

I knew I had to get out, this had to end somehow.

An awfully long time seemed to pass before my feet managed to get me to the door, which I opened, but before I could close it, Szmodits growled after me, not much conviction in his voice, "Better watch your step there or somebody'll beat the living shit out of you!" which I couldn't be angry at him for, and which didn't frighten me either, since I knew that this sentence, too, had to be said.

Of course I can't claim that later as I stood silent and more or less motionless in the gym I thought only about this episode and recalled every detail exactly as it had happened, but it did preoccupy me, though there were plenty of other distractions, like the fantasies about the funeral, the discomfort of standing in place, and spring, already present in the blueness of the wintry sky, making itself felt through the tall, heavily barred windows; I thought about the famous corpse, too, with its stomach and chest split open with a single incision and the inner organs removed, ready to be stuffed, but with what? they couldn't very well use straw; I saw the body lying on the dissecting table with the exposed heart, the soft lung, the purple kidneys and intestines next to it, and although I didn't like thinking about it, this still made me happy and I derived some dark satisfaction from having thoughts I knew I shouldn't have, since violating the spirit of the solemn ceremony got my mind off my fears better than anything else might have, for naturally the boys' threat had had its effect, and just when I thought I had nicely forgotten the incident, a totally insignificant detail would suddenly flash before my eyes, the green wall of the toilet or the cigarette smoke, and revive my fear, and when you are gripped by fear and trembling you want to find a clearly identifiable object to go with it: what I most feared was that they'd sneak up on me and jump me, yes, I was afraid of being overwhelmed and beaten to a pulp, though given their numbers my defeat and humiliation was a foregone conclusion, and for days I'd been thinking of ways to protect myself; in the gym, Prém was standing right in front of me, Kálmán Csúzdi behind me and a little to the right, and I could feel the presence of the other two, who stood next to each other way in the back — in short, I was surrounded, though at the moment they couldn't move any more than I could; considering my total helplessness, this enforced immobility was a shield offering a temporary reprieve, though I couldn't help staring at Prém's neck, fearing he might suddenly turn around and slap me across the face, as a signal for the others to pounce.

This was the reason I couldn't forget the moment when I felt someone looking at me; fear made the moment memorable.

But I'm not even sure just how it happened; it's surely one of the most mysterious and baffling sensations when someone is watching us or talking or just thinking about us and we turn, without anything consciously registering, toward the source of attention and only afterward realize why we looked in that direction — we felt it, we say, but can't say just what, as if our senses functioned more subtly and naturally than our minds or, to be more precise, as if our minds can work only with the materials and energies our senses provide and usually the processing is delayed, which makes for constant dissonance and uncertainty, and the question remains: What sort of force, energy, or material is able to span great distances and signal to our senses that that of others is present, what kinds of signals can we receive or broadcast without conscious intention? when all we seem to do is look at the other person, think about him, or make a casual comment very quietly, and suddenly the air is charged, loses its neutrality, and relays clear messages, whether friendly or hostile, and then the most complex form of communication follows; and I don't even think she wanted to attract my attention, which at that point would have been unthinkable for many reasons, so her glance was as unconscious as my turning toward her, two beings staring at each other unconsciously, baring themselves to each other eagerly, shamelessly; needless to say, we had to take care, our teachers were up on the stage, watching, and because of the special nature of the proceedings, they couldn't move either and couldn't yell at us as they usually did, so we were spared "Stop moving back there!" or "Keep still, snotnose, or I'll kick you out on your butt!" — warnings that now had to be communicated with looks only: a twitch of an eyebrow or an almost imperceptible nod warning that unruliness, conspicuous fidgeting, and audible giggles were duly noted and would not go unpunished, all of which made the silence heavier and more ominous than it would have been if they could freely shout at us; but she was one of those who lived inconspicuously among us, never calling attention to herself, much too timid and bashful to risk violating the rules, and it was inconceivable that she'd start flirting with me out of boredom just to amuse herself; I simply didn't know what to make of her look.

For this look, I realized later when I had time to reflect on it, called attention to itself precisely because it didn't seem the result of some childish whim, which became clear to me when, in response to my uncomprehending, questioning glance, her face did not dissolve into a defensive or apologetic smile but remained motionless, her gaze unwavering, with nothing awkwardly solemn about it either, simply serious, and I asked myself, Why is that dumb girl giving me the eye? and my own eyes must have asked the same question, as I thought of the silly line we used to blurt out in similarly ambiguous situations, as a form of defense against embarrassment—"Just keep lookin' if you so smart, come on closer 'n' smell my fart" — and she didn't respond to this either, didn't change, even though my grin must have indicated what I was thinking about, and I almost laughed out loud; in the end, I did notice a change, but in myself, because I couldn't turn away and in fact also became serious, as if, from the slippery slopes of my earlier fear and anxiety and of my lopsided grin, I now had to plunge into an infinitely soft body of gray water where nothing palpably familiar remained except this extraordinarily open gaze, seeking no effect, therefore most effective, meaning to achieve nothing, with no recognizable purpose or wish to communicate, using the eye simply and naturally for what it was meant for — to see, to look — reducing the organ to its basic biological function, a nearly uninvolved possessor of objects in its sight; and this was so unusual yet so similar to everything I had vainly longed for in my relation to Krisztián, because he always found ways to evade me, to stay aloof — oh, how familiar it all seemed — yet I had to be suspicious of her, because the open look of natural possession is separated by only a thin line from the other kind of look that appears when, concentrating on what is happening within us, we do not notice what our eyes are looking at and, the inner occurrence seeming more important, the lens itself cannot decide whether to focus on the inner or outer subject and the face we involuntarily present to the person we are observing becomes impassive and inert; but no, I could detect not a single trace of this self-absorbed blankness; her face remained discreetly closed and inaccessible, but the look in her eyes was like an animal's! no mistake, she was looking at me, nobody else, she saw me, her attention was directed at no one but me.

I saw her through heads and shoulders, standing in the first row, being one of the shortest pupils, while I, not much taller, was in the third row; the distance between us was considerable because boys and girls were separated in the gym, so not only did her gaze have to traverse the wide no-man's-land which, in compliance with school regulations, divided the sexes and where on other occasions the beribboned flag of our Young Pioneer troop was raised with solemn ceremony and the accompaniment of annoying loud drumrolls, but she also had to twist her head and look backward to see me, yet she seemed to be standing very close to me, right in front of me; I don't know how long it took for all my suspicions to dissipate, but after a while her closeness was almost palpable; she was practically inside me, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the wintry pallor of her brown skin, the almost sickly dark circles around her eyes where the veins were so prominent that the brown of her skin seemed to fade into blue; the tiny mouth under the pointed narrow nose, the impertinent little bulges of her upper lip, and her forehead that later was to have a special fascination for me; I grew to love its clear, even brown hue in summer, its delicate spots in winter, when the bone structure appeared in faint outline, softening the shadows in the delicate hollow of her temples and making her hair, pulled back with white clips, even darker, her wild, thick, strong hair, like her eyebrows, arching delicately but asymmetrically, almost comically, above her eyes; that's how she looked then, or rather, that's how I saw her, that's what I saw of her, that and her neck as it rose out of the open collar of her white blouse, the muscles hardening with almost boyish toughness as she turned around, keeping her head low; only later did I begin to notice her body; her eyes were what was important now, and perhaps their immediate setting — her face, but that, too, was soon lost, to be replaced by a warm, hazy sensation, not unlike fainting, a mere feeling, a state of being, a certainty that at this moment she and I were experiencing the same feeling, sharing an identical, most intense state of being which never became conscious and in which there were no thoughts, glances, or bodies but all these fading into blurred outlines and replaced by something that cannot be talked about.

Her eyes were in my eyes, my face penetrated hers, and my neck felt her neck and was keenly aware of the danger, the risk she took by turning around to me, and as if blinking might interrupt the continuity of our shared gaze, we seemed not to have closed our eyes, not even once, and our gaze seemed endless.

We are trying to stare each other down, I thought then, but today, delving into my memories, I find this interpretation derisory; our inner monologues are but feeble rationalizations, deceptions, or, at best, mistakes compared to the dialogues conducted by eyes and faces; of course we weren't trying to stare each other down.

Yet we shouldn't be surprised if strong emotions demand immediate verbal expression, since the mechanism that operates on early conditioning, what we call personality, is compelled to defend itself most vigorously precisely when in its devotion to another it loses its conditioned habits.

I simply didn't know what to make of it all.

I couldn't comprehend what had happened, was happening, or was yet to happen to me, and I didn't know where it would lead us, this powerful, uncontrollable, ultimately unfounded happiness, the ease with which our gaze possessed our emotions, and I began to be afraid again — of her, and of Prém, who might choose this moment, now that I'd found some security with her, to turn around and quick as lightning hit me across the mouth; if he did that so that she saw it, I'd have to hit him back, and that, I felt, given the likely complications, should be avoided at all cost; and I didn't understand why she did this here, why now? since plenty of opportunities for this, or something like this, arose at other times and in other places — it was not, after all, some inexplicable miracle that brought her face so close to mine, and it would be a deceptive exaggeration to claim it was sheer force of emotion that shortened the physical distance between us; no, I had known her well enough to sense her closeness from afar, even with the heads and shoulders between us; this wasn't the first time I'd seen her — although at this moment she really did seem like a stranger we might pick out of a huge crowd simply because we felt lost and in some undefinable way this person struck us as friendly and familiar, as though we'd met and even talked to each other before — so I did know her, and her body, her face, her gestures were all familiar to me, I just wasn't sufficiently conscious of this knowledge or that it might be important to me; I've no idea why, I just hadn't noticed her, though I should have; for six years we'd been attending the same classes in the same school. My senses no doubt had registered her every feature, but impassively, with no emotional resonance; come to think of it, there was no aspect of her quietly modest being that could have been unfamiliar, since during all those years of such close proximity we had to communicate on many levels, and quite intimately, too, because she was on confidential terms with two girls, Hédi Szán and Maja Prihoda, with whom I had an unusual and for me typical relationship — ambiguous but very warm, less than love but far more than friendship; she was rather like a lady-in-waiting to them, a quiet shadow cast on their beauty, a mediator between two rivals, and, in their meaner moments, their maid and servant, a position which, with the dignity of her innate wisdom and sense of justice, she did not seem to resent, being as neutral then as she was whenever the two, with exaggerated solicitude, chose to treat and love her as an equal.

That hot summer afternoon when she stepped onto the main road from the forest path, the soles of her red sandals crunched a few more times and only then did her searching glance stand out in the quivering silence, a moment before meeting my eyes; and I was standing by the fence, among the bushes, as I did every day, hoping for and being terrified of something, not knowing what but feeling that something was going to happen, something had to happen, but also knowing that as soon as she appeared, my fantasies, however innocent, could not be realized; I had barely swallowed the last bite of my bread, and holding the fence with one hand I was about to wipe my other hand on my thigh, smearing the lard, but then our searching eyes met and couldn't part, we kept staring for a long time, without stirring, endlessly, like that time in the gym, except then, without acknowledging it, we were protected by both distance and the crowd, whereas here we were utterly defenseless, at the mercy of our deepening emotions; yet the present moment was as inexplicably accidental as that encounter in the gym, for on many other occasions our eyes, our faces, and our gestures could have been this close, but it never happened, not once after that first time, though we kept looking at each other all the time, kept looking for the chance to gaze at each other from afar and near, though cautiously, stealthily, and as soon as we had the chance, we ruined it almost on purpose, looked away, fled, then quickly looked back to see if the other still felt the same desire, the same pain; once, she ran away and looked back while still running, then tripped and fell but quickly jumped up and continued running; her compulsion to flee made her so graceful and nimble that I couldn't even laugh at her as I would have wished; that early spring morning began to haunt me again, though much had changed since then, if only because without either of us talking about our relationship it could not remain a secret; after a few weeks passed, the word was out that Livia Stili was in love with me.

Actually, it was not so hard to tell, we had given ourselves away already in the gym; after Livia turned discreetly away, her gaze was still with me though she was no longer looking at me, so she was the one who put an end to the moment whose beginning I couldn't exactly recall: first, she simply unfixed her stare, as though it had been a mistake and she'd been looking at not me but Prém, and there was something undeniably flirtatious in how she withdrew her glance; then she turned her head, thoughtfully, seriously, but that, too, for all the subtlety of the motion, was blatantly theatrical! she could stand there, calm and dutiful, ostensibly meeting all the requirements of the silent ritual, as if nothing had happened, as if it had been an accident, an error, yet by turning away she in fact reinforced the effect produced by her glance — what could I do? ashamed of being so vulnerable, I, too, turned away, yet still I felt that I should look back, that something important was being taken away from me — just how important I hadn't even realized until then — though what was truly important was not that I got something from her but that it could be taken away so easily, every minute without her looking at me now seemed wasted, empty, unbearable, a time in which I did not exist; mostly those eyes stayed with me, but her mouth and forehead, too, and I had to have them in front of me, no amount of fantasizing would do, without their visible presence everything would recede to an oppressive, faraway dimness; but for all that, I didn't look back, which took a lot of effort: my face, neck, shoulders, even my arm grew numb, but I didn't want to look, and making yourself not do something is always a struggle, you stretch it until the effort becomes unnatural; the longer I stood there, abandoned, the stronger and more painful my awareness of this altogether impossible sensation, almost as if my body had swelled and swallowed another, my distended skin was covering more than my own body and my brain was beginning to think another's thoughts; the more agonizing this state became, the more offended and angry I got, desperate in need of relief, for the real state of affairs, the true balance of power, seemed perfectly clear: I weighed the opportunities afforded by each passing moment but had to concede, and it wasn't easy, that I didn't have the upper hand; it was she who had both provoked my attention and then abandoned me; therefore, in no circumstance should I look back now, for if I did, it would be clear that she was winning, was the stronger, and it would mean that once again somebody had subdued me, triumphed over me, this servant, this ugly girl, just a girl, a maid, this angry conclusion being not totally unfounded, since she seemed to play the same role around Hédi and Maja that Prém did around Krisztián and Kálmán Csúzdi, so my feelings about the two servants neatly merged, and just for that I vowed that even if she stared at me for the rest of her life, I'd never so much as cast another glance at her, she'd never be able to do this to me again! let her turn blue in the face, let her admire me to her heart's content, let there be someone who follows me and only me with her eyes — and let me pretend it means absolutely nothing to me; but when I finally did look back — I couldn't help it, her burning face made me — I could feel nothing stronger than again that look, that face, looking at me; and if she kept looking, then after a while I could let go, just for a moment, look and then quickly look away, to make her look even harder, feel more painfully my absence, let her know how serious it can be when I take my eyes off her; but it wasn't she looking at me — I was deceived again! — it was Hédi Szán, standing a few rows over, in a perfect position to observe both of us, and no doubt she did, because ever so sweetly, softly, albeit with a hint of malice, she made a face.

Our last class was canceled, we were sent home at noon.

And as we lined up for dismissal, we heard church bells, first only four peals breaking the bright blue silence outside, then the great bell tolling, answered by a clanging smaller one, and then both boomed and pealed as though nothing had happened and it was simply noontime on an ordinary day, no different from any other.

I didn't want to walk home with anyone, get into a conversation, so on the staircase I fell out of line before the others thundered down the steps, unruly and irrepressible, shouting, a pent-up herd squeezing through the narrow doorway out into the open, where one could finally catch one's breath as if breathing for the first time in one's life and where the teachers' hysterical yells no longer made a difference, and I headed for the third floor, which is why Krisztián may have thought I was going to the teachers' room to report him, but in an unguarded moment and very cautiously, lest I be seen, I continued on; past the third-floor landing the staircase became narrow and dusty — since then I've often dreamed of myself ascending those dusty, untraveled stairs, which they obviously seldom cleaned, I am the only one ever to climb these stairs and in my dream this has special significance, for I am doing something forbidden, I shouldn't be here, thick, soft dust rises with every step and is slow to settle, so when I look back I see I've left no footprints, I prick my ears but nothing stirs, it's all quiet, I feel safe, though I know I could get caught, and no matter how alert I am and certain that no one saw me, I still have the feeling somebody is watching, and perhaps I am that somebody, unable to hide my little secrets from myself; anxiously I reach the attic door, which of course is locked; the black iron door was always locked and yet I always tried it anyway, in case someone might have left it unlocked by mistake.

This was my last refuge, the sort of hideaway one instinctively seeks out; I had such a place in our garden, too, also dark, but where the light was blocked by the foliage of a chestnut tree and honeysuckle crawling up the high bushes — it was interesting to watch the struggle of the two, with the bushes letting out new shoots and the honeysuckle, as if waiting in ambush, creeping after them, by autumn covering all the new shoots; here, by the attic, I had a pile of old desks, file cabinets, chairs, blackboards, crumbling old wooden platforms, and the neutral silence of discarded furniture; there, in the garden, my solitary daydreams and a lingering memory of secret games with Kálmán, which I believed to be sinful; moving in the neutral silence of discarded furniture, now bending down, now creeping sideways, I tried to avoid the hard edges and sudden protrusions, and when a bunch of old things began to shift and creak and seemed about to topple, I froze and instinctively covered my head, but kept inching toward the inner sanctum — nothing more than an up-ended old leather couch pushed against the wall with just enough room to slip behind, where I let myself be pressed against the wall by the overhanging cushions, which I clung to and which clung to me; the darkness was total and the leather, as always, cold, until I warmed it with my body.

I closed my eyes, and I thought that now I must kill myself.

I had no other thought.

It wasn't so bad to think about it; no, it was rather nice.

I'll go home, pry open my father's desk, sneak out into the garden, to my private place, and simply do it.

I saw the gesture, saw myself doing it.

I put the barrel of the revolver into my mouth, pulled the trigger.

And the thought that nothing would follow this act for me illuminated, harshly yet benevolently, everything that did follow.

So that I could see it.

As if for the first time I could see, simply and free of any weakening emotions, what my life was really like.

Everything hurt, in my chest and in my neck, there were moments when the top of my head hurt so much it was as if someone had pulled a round hat of pain over it; I shivered, I quaked; this was nothing like the pleasurable pain of self-pity but every part of the body hurting at once with a pain independent of the body, moving around, each stab stronger than the one before, each one making the previous seem like child's play; I wanted to scream and scream and keep on screaming, but I didn't dare, and that's also why I couldn't endure it anymore.

There was nothing new in the thought that I might not be normal, that I was just as sick as my sister, though in a different way, and that she may have been the only person with whom, in our sickness, I had something in common; what was new was the realization that I could once and for all put an end to the pain of trying to be like other people, to these completely futile attempts, since I could never resemble anyone strongly enough to be just like them and there was always a difference, and ultimately I always found myself alone; no one, myself included, ever wanted this difference or whatever it was; and though I may have hated myself for it, with every effort to identify with someone and at the same time lure him into my orbit, I only called attention to this difference, to my illness, to the very thing I wanted to annihilate; with my enticements I only revealed what I wanted hidden; and the realization that this unbridgeable gulf within me could be done away with by simply killing my body first occurred to me then and there.

She didn't look at me after that.

Yet it seemed to me that only her look might still save me.

If only it could be made to last, if only time wouldn't pass without it, because that look of hers, that ultimate self-revelation, and the way she gazed, the way we looked at each other, might clear up the confusion within me, explain my unfulfilled yearnings, my sins, committed yet irredeemable, my endless lies — for I had to lie all the time to protect myself, which was petty and humiliating, and I was terrified, too, of being found out; I was suffering and saw no way to be free of suffering, because it wasn't only that I had to lie, deny myself everything that could give me pleasure, no, none of this: I could never have what I liked, and I had to live as if carrying a heavy, burdensome stranger with me, hiding my real self under this dead weight; in my infinite desperation I did try to share some of my pain with my mother, but so much had accumulated I couldn't possibly tell her everything, wouldn't even know where to begin, and anyway, I couldn't be that open with her, since she had plenty of complaints about me having to do with the very secrets I was hiding from the world, mainly out of consideration for her, a consideration I felt was justified because despite her irritation, her anger, complaints, and even disgust with me, she wished to see in me some unattainable perfection and for this reason was even stricter with me, at times more cruel, than with anyone else; the only thing that relieved the harshness and made it acceptable was that I had my private language with Mother, just as with my little sister, in which we could avoid words we judged irrelevant or meaningless, a language of touching, at times touching with our very tongues, the language of our warm skin, of our bodies; if I earlier mentioned a sickness of mine, I might risk another guess: that perhaps it was her sickness, and my sister's, which in some mysterious way penetrated and permeated my own being; these two disparate yet to me closely related illnesses might have been the consequence of the pervasive imbalance and uncertainty in my immediate surroundings, the physical manifestation of the fact that everyone was sick, which for a long time didn't bother me, which I accepted as the inevitable condition of my life, indeed finding my mother's illness rather beautiful and loving it; she must have infected me with that sense of grandeur one finds in illness while I was holding her hand or gently sliding my own over her bare arm, when I'd sit on the floor by her bed, put my head on her lap, or simply rest it on the sheet and breathe in the smell, the mixture of febrile warmth, sweat, and medicine emanating from her body, from her silken nightgown, a smell that was always there no matter how frequently the room was aired, and listen to her breathing, letting her hover between sleep and wakefulness, until my own breathing took over her strange, soft, fluttering rhythm, the rapid rises and slow falls; I got used to the smell to the point of no longer finding it repellent; sometimes she would speak to me softly, opening her eyes just a little, then closing them again: "You are beautiful," she would say, and I was always as astonished by this phenomenon in the bed as she must have thought my presence most pleasing; there was her white face sunk deep in the white pillows, her thick auburn hair neatly spread out, with strands of gray flashing through around the temples, and her smoothly rounded forehead, fine nose, and, above all, the heavy eyelids with long lashes which she would lift lazily as if in a daze, so that for a fraction of a second her crystalline green eyes appeared, looking at me so brightly and intently that her illness seemed a mistake, an illusion, a game, but when the lashes were lowered and the green eyes were once again covered by the blue-veined flesh of the eyelids, their color an ever-darkening brown, something, I don't know what, seemed to make her sick again, though the gaze remained on her sick face, along with a wan smile on her lips, which was meant for me, a mere hint of a smile, and "Tell me," she'd say at moments like this, "tell me what's been happening," and if I didn't reply, because I couldn't or didn't want to, she would continue by herself: "Should I tell you what I've been thinking about just now? did your sister eat her dinner all right? at least I didn't hear your grandmother yell; I'd rather you didn't stay long today, I feel weak, maybe that's why I thought of the meadow again, I wasn't asleep, I was standing in a great big beautiful meadow and wondering why it looked so familiar, I distinctly remembered having seen it before, and that's when you walked in," and she would stop, take a quick breath, as I watched the blanket on her breast rising and falling; "I probably would never have thought about it otherwise, because when you live, new images take the place of old ones all the time, but for some time now I've had the feeling that nothing's ever happened to me, never, though of course lots of things have, and you know I've told you much of it already, still, it's almost as if they didn't happen to me, they're only so many pictures, and while I'm in the pictures, somehow it's more important, or it says more about me, or it's more like me that I lie here in this bed, that this picture doesn't change, I lie here the same way, and if I look out the window I see the same things, now it's getting dark, now it's getting light, always the same picture, and in the meantime I can traipse around in my old pictures because there are no new pictures to disturb the old ones," sighing deeply, the rising air breaking the rhythm of her words: "I don't even know why I'm telling you all this; you should be able to understand it, still I feel a little guilty telling such things to a child, I'm philosophizing, I guess, which is kind of ridiculous, but I don't think there's anything sad or tragic or serious that should be kept from you, it's simply natural, and I never denied myself anything I thought was natural and I should do it"; laughing at this and opening her eyes for a moment, she would take my hand as if telling me to go ahead and do everything I felt to be natural: "Let's just stay like this now, quiet, all right? I'm tired, and I can't get that picture out of my mind, the one I wanted to tell you about but couldn't, just as you don't tell me much, either, though I always ask you, beg you to tell me things, and I understand perfectly when you'd like to tell me this or that but feel you must keep quiet, I even know what those things are that you keep quiet about, because all we can hope for is that the same kinds of things are happening to both of us, there is no difference, always the same things must keep happening, even the feelings are the same, only the pictures change; we understand each other even if we say nothing, that's how it is, and now let's be quiet for a little while, all right? and then go, darling, all right?"

Of course it wasn't so simple to leave, and I doubt she wanted me to obey her and go; her silence only increased the tension between us, and as if she had meant to add to it, she kept repeating herself, "Go now, there's a good boy, go, will you?" sometimes pressing me even harder to herself, in the guise of an embrace, holding on to me, hoping to delay the moment when prompted by some inner sense of propriety I'd get up and somewhat dazed but also relieved stumble into another room; but not yet — rather than spoiling the moment, I wanted to stretch it out, hold my face in my own breath, which her body had heated, in our common breath that made me feverish, too, and to position myself so that my mouth could brush against the skin of her bare arm, say in the curve inside her elbow, which is an especially soft spot, or her neck, where, in contrast, the mouth could explore the tensing muscles and tendons, and maneuvering further still, making it look completely accidental, pry open her mouth, and with the inside of my lips and the tip of my tongue feel the taste and smell of her skin.

She didn't pretend not to have noticed these amorous gropings, but didn't want to expose my sly little tricks, either; she never made believe that she took them to be the bumbling, simpleminded signs of a child's love or that they made her feel uncomfortable; neither did she retreat behind the protective shield of illness, pretending that only physical weakness made these dangerous excesses of mutual tenderness possible and necessary — no, she didn't do any of this, but responded simply and naturally by softly kissing my ear, my neck, my hair, wherever she could reach; once, burying her head in my hair, she remarked that she could smell the little male animal in my hair, a whole school of itching little males, and that she rather liked it; it was a smell I hadn't noticed before, but from then on searched for, wanting to experience the cause of her fleeting pleasure; all along she was giving me a live demonstration of naturalness, pointing out the natural boundaries of naturalness, because even when she used words to interrupt and thereby cool the ardor of our physical contact, the interruption appeared as natural and appropriate as the contact itself, not a defense or protest but a sensible rerouting of emotions that had no other outlet.

"All right, then," she said somewhat louder, and laughed a little for having come this far, "all right, maybe I'll try to tell you what I couldn't tell you before, listen: what I wanted to say was that I wasn't alone in that meadow; we were lying there in the tall grass, the sun was shining, with hardly any clouds in the sky, only those very light summer clouds that hardly move and you could hear the insects, wasps and bees, but it wasn't as nice as you might imagine, because every now and then a fly landed on my skin, and though I'd move an arm or a leg and it flew away, it would come right back, in the midday heat flies are always that pesky, try it sometime, and it was noon then; it's as if on purpose they won't let you enjoy whatever it is you want to enjoy, all that beauty, they simply won't have it, maybe because they also want to enjoy something just then, your skin, for instance, but again I'm not telling you the story I wanted to tell you; I can feel it myself, it's not for children, especially not you; one should keep quiet about everything, anyway; well, three of us were in that meadow, and there really was such a meadow, we came in a boat and tied it up at a prearranged spot where we were to meet the others, but we got there first and stretched out in the grass, quite a distance from one another, two men and me; and when you walked into the room and I woke up — came to, rather, yes, that's the right word, I hadn't been asleep at all — I was inside the picture, just then I saw the three of us from above, the way you do in a dream, and saw how terribly, how infinitely beautiful all this was then, because everything in the world is beautiful, though for me then it was sheer hell, a stinking swamp, and not because of the flies but because we couldn't decide who I really belonged to."

"And Father?"

"Yes, he was there, too."

"And how did you decide?"

"I didn't."

She may have wanted to say something else but she didn't, as though she couldn't utter another word, not a single word ever again — that's how abrupt her silence seemed.

And I couldn't ask her to go on; we both tensed up, lying there like two logs, or like two stalking beasts frozen in a moment of indecision, not knowing which will first pounce on the prey.

Saying more would have meant going beyond all possible limits; as it was, we had come very close, helplessly skirting, if not actually arriving at, the very last border.

She could not go any further out of sheer tact, and I couldn't have taken any more, so she smiled serenely, beautifully, her special smile for me, but this smile no longer seemed to be a part of a larger whole, a process with a beginning and an end, and I looked at her as one would look at a photograph of a smiling face out of the past, though the moment offered more than the images and random ebb and flow of thoughts evoked by this picture; it may sound like sentimental exaggeration, but this moment was a sudden illumination for me or, anyway, what for lack of a better word we usually call illumination: I saw her face, her neck, the creases and folds of her bedding, but every little detail acquired a story of its own, far richer than I had possibly imagined, and each story possessed a past filled with emotional and visual clues of whose existence I had otherwise been ignorant, and though the stories could not be recalled by ordinary, descriptive means, at this moment I could somehow grasp the clues: for example, there was a picture of me standing in front of the closed bathroom door, late at night, dark, and I wanted to go in but didn't dare, because what I was curious about I knew was forbidden and rightly so, but it wasn't their nakedness — they never deliberately concealed that from me, and I was the one who considered it a secret, the very top layer of the secret; no matter how unself-consciously they might have moved about in front of me, if I happened to see them naked I was the one who couldn't see enough of them, was embarrassed and excited by the delicious sense of peeping, by having to glance at their usually covered parts, which always seemed new and different and which I could never get used to; but what filled me with even more exquisite pain, offended my sense of modesty, and intensified my jealousy of their nakedness was the realization that their matter-of-fact behavior in front of me was part of a piously fraudulent game; I sensed that the two uncovered bodies, whether displayed individually or together, were meant only for each other, never for me, that only with each other could they be truly uninhibited, and I was excluded from their exclusive company, regardless of whether they happened to hate each other at that moment and intended to go for days without exchanging a single word, pretending to be completely indifferent to each other's presence, or whether the opposite was true, that they loved each other and every casual touch and fleeting glance, every burst of unexpected laughter, every knowing smile, bespoke an ineffable tenderness that I could not possibly have anything to do with; I was excluded, bypassed, made superfluous even if they seemed to love me the most at just such moments, with a love that was the overflow of their passion for each other, a treatment that was no less humiliating than being ignored or considered as an unnecessary, bothersome object; so Mother's last sentence, that unexpected confession, whose ambiguity held out all sorts of possibilities but also steered our short conversation toward that tense silence, seemed to illuminate for me the uneven nature of our relationship: she was going to let me have the key to secrets I had tried to unlock whenever I wished their relationship to be less exclusive than they made it appear, whenever I hoped they would somehow let me squeeze in between them; from inside the bathroom I would hear the sound of water splashing, soft words, and Mother's laughter, a peculiar laugh, so unlike all her other laughs, which gave me the intoxicating feeling that I had stood before this bathroom once before, in exactly the same way, in the dark, in my pajamas, and had been standing there ever since, everything that had occurred between these two indeterminate points in time being nothing but a vague dream, which had a beginning that now, as I was waking, I couldn't remember; and then, in a very different voice, deeper and stronger but preserving something of the playfulness of a high-pitched, squealing laugh, Mother called out: "Who is there in the dead of night, behind that door?" and of course I didn't answer, and thought that maybe the creaking floor had given me away, though I was so careful not to let it creak, or could a physical presence be strong enough to be felt through a closed door? "Is that you, darling? A black raven knocking on my door? Come in, come in, whoever you are!" I couldn't answer, but she didn't seem to expect a reply, for she said, "Speak to me, speak, and come!" practically singing her words, and they were both shrieking with laughter, the water was splashing and purling in the bathtub, spilling onto the tile floor, and I could neither leave nor say something and walk in, but then the door opened.

It was no mistake or a sensory illusion that made me think just now of having stood like this in a doorway once before; Mother's unfinished sentence conjured up part of an even earlier image, only a flash, really, just her feet, her head on the pillows, but enough to make the abyss I could now look into appear even more attractively bottomless, an image that, while standing in the bathroom door, only my instincts could recall— groping blindly for traces of an existing and carefully stored memory, knowing precisely its time and place, savoring its many flavors, and still unable to locate it — but now, unsummoned and unannounced it appeared, hanging into the other image, the pictures of nakedness affirming the connection between the two: when Father, leaning out of the bathtub, opened the door, my astonished face appeared in the steamy bathroom mirror, he loomed enormous, standing in the tub and leaning toward the door handle, his back, like a red blotch, reflected in the mirror streaked with running drops of condensed steam; both my face and his back were in the mirror; Mother was sitting in the water, rubbing her heavily shampooed hair; she smiled at me, blinking because the shampoo stung, and then, closing her eyes, she dunked her head to wash out the shampoo under the water; then, as now, I felt the same dazed helplessness, as if the pajamas were my body's only defense against feelings that would otherwise leave me naked, the pajamas were more real than I was, and then, too, I started walking in the direction of a remote, hollow, almost inaudible yet very penetrating voice; it was night, I got up to pee, and heard this voice, unfamiliar but not at all frightening, on a silent winter night lit by a cold moon, when the light refracted by the window frames into sharp angles and planes seems to float, and soft shadows seem to soak up all the familiar objects so that you are afraid to cross the sharp border of light, a voice coming from the hallway; my face turned a frightful blue by the moon, I saw it flash for a second in the hallway mirror, I thought someone was screaming or sobbing, but there was no one out in the hall, the voice was coming from the kitchen; I moved on, guided by my own amazement, my bare feet squishing on the stone floor; nothing, the kitchen was dark, something squeaked under the opening door, but then silence, no one there either; still, I felt or imagined the silence of living bodies, as if not only pieces of furniture soaked in the night were standing there and the quiet I heard was not just my bated breath; then, from behind the open door of the maid's room I heard a deep hoarse rattle, and with it the rhythmic creaking and groaning of bedsprings, each creak and groan and thrust seeming to let loose, from deep inside a throat, a high-pitched, ever-rising scream, a cross between a sob and a shrieking laugh; this was the voice that had attracted me, I wasn't imagining it, after all, and one more step was all it would take to look through the open door, and I wanted to look but couldn't; it seemed that I'd never reach the miserable door, still not there, still far away, even though the voice was already with me, so close, so within me, with all its depths, heights, and rhythms, and I didn't even notice when I finally managed to take that longed-for last step and could also see what I was hearing.

Of course Father did not appear enormous because he really was enormous, in fact he was rather slight and slender; it's things like the incorrect use of the word "enormous" that now make me realize the powerful inhibitions and self-deceptions, over long decades, that I must grapple with when speaking of things one ordinarily doesn't, or perhaps shouldn't, talk about but which, since they are linked inextricably with the so-called inner life of the boy I once was, are unavoidable; so let's take a deep breath and relate quickly, before one's voice flags, that quite apart from that very early incident which for better or worse had dropped out of my memory for a long time and resurfaced unexpectedly and vividly only when Mother told me about the meadow — yes, the memory of Father's body in the scissors of two female legs on the bed of the maid's room did come back, like a well-kept secret that I mustn't tell Mother even now; I couldn't see the face, but I could see that the squeals of pleasure and pain were muffled because with his outspread fingers Father had thrust a pillow over the head below him; the legs entwining his waist told me that this woman was not my mother, how could she be, what would she be doing there? and because we can just as easily recognize a thigh, a foot, the curve of a calf as we can a nose, a mouth, or a pair of eyes, it isn't surprising that I knew those legs were not hers, and it wasn't her voice I heard from under the pillow — I knew very well who lived in the maid's room — what was startling was that I half expected them to be Mother's legs, not as if I had the vaguest notion of what was actually taking place but awareness yielded to unawareness in my assuming that in such close proximity of mutual pleasure there could be no room for anyone but Mother, thus, what I saw before me, no matter how pleasurable and therefore perfectly natural it may have seemed to a small child, was still repellent; yet all this was not directly related to the perception of Father as someone enormous, an impression that was made on me when, in his usual unsmiling, humorless way, he leaned out of the bathtub to open the door and, as he did, also blocked my way with his wet naked body glistening in the strong bathroom light, towering over me so that my eyes were focused on the darkest part of him, his loins, one might say right under my nose; and I knew, saw, and felt that, as always, not a single unguarded glance or move I made would escape his notice; his wet hair clung to his scalp, his forehead left clean and open, and his gaze — normally tempered and sheltered by strands of straight blond hair and thus engagingly attractive, almost beautiful, though his steely blue eyes made it strong and stern, but the thick mass of hair, which he combed straight back but which kept falling forward as he moved, lending him a casual, boyish look — this piercing gaze dominated his face, an open, attentive, cool, and threatening gaze, as if challenging the world, demanding an explanation from it; it seemed that he wasn't only towering over me but forever looking down from some unapproachable peak, from the heights of his undisputable certainties, from which he could afford to tolerate others' preoccupation with petty desires, instincts, gooey emotions, while he watched and judged, even if he didn't often put his judgments into words; viewed from this perspective, straight on and a bit from below, his body seemed perfect, at any rate what we usually call the perfect male body, and I deliberately used this emotionally neutral word, modestly avoiding the slightest suggestion of a natural attraction, so that I needn't call it beautiful, let alone exceptionally beautiful or, perish the thought, overwhelmingly beautiful — by calling it beautiful we'd have to admit being defenseless, at its mercy, and then, by the nature of things, we'd want to be at its mercy, indeed our greatest desire would be to immerse ourselves in it, to travel down the byways of this body, if only by tracing its lines with our fingers, to make our own with our touch what our eyes can only see: the broad shoulders that years of rowing and swimming had turned so firmly muscular that the otherwise charming protrusions of the shoulder and chest bones were barely visible; the firm shoulders leading smoothly, fluidly yet firmly, to the more articulated musculature of the arms and the well-toned, undulating plane of the chest, where the pregnability of the bare surface was both accentuated and toned down by a profusion of blondish hair, more attractive when wet, for the clinging strands encircled the nipples' darkened areolae like improvised wreaths, guiding our glance farther, to follow either the contours of the torso, narrowing at the waist, or the gently rippling sinews sheathing the ribs, and linger perhaps on the firm bulge of the belly, where the dark hollow of the navel and especially the wedge of pubic hair, pointing upward, might impede a farther descent of our glance, but this delay is far from final, because eyes, independent of will, always pick out the darkest and lightest points, they're created like that by nature, as are all our instincts, and so we finally reach the loins, and if we have a chance to linger, if our glance is cautious enough and he doesn't notice — but of course he will, because in a similar situation his eyes would do the same, but he may be generous and pretend he didn't mind, or, if he did he might turn away and put something there, or drop a word, meant to be casual but inappropriate enough to reveal his embarrassment — or, if his knowledge of human nature was so secure that, suspending all moral considerations, he'd simply let us tarry, then we'd love to linger for a while, scrutinizing this rather intricate region, hoping to savor every detail, to assess its possibilities, knowing well that our eyes' journey thus far had been but a deferment, anticipation, and preparation: now we have reached the most intimate object of our curiosity: this is our place, this is what we'd been longing for, only from here can we draw the knowledge necessary to evaluate the whole body; consequently, it would be no exaggeration to claim that even from a moral standpoint we have reached the most critical spot.

As I had once before, I yielded to the desire to hold it in my hands.

It was summer, a Sunday morning, with sunlight already streaming through the white curtains drawn over the open windows, when I walked into my parents' bedroom to crawl into their bed, as was my custom, not suspecting that this was to be the morning I'd have to give up this pleasant habit for good; the bed, the bed in which Mother later lay alone, wrapped in the heavy odor of her illness, which was so hard to get accustomed to, was wide and somewhat higher than average and seemed to dominate the almost empty room, its headboard and frame polished black wood, as was the other furniture — a plain chest of drawers, a dressing table and mirror, an armchair upholstered in white brocade, and a nightstand — yet these, along with the blank walls all around, made the room neither cold nor unfriendly; their blanket was on the floor as if just kicked there, Mother was gone, fixing breakfast most likely, and Father was still asleep, all curled up with only a thin sheet covering his naked body; I still don't know what possessed me to cast off my natural modesty and inhibitions, not even realizing I was doing so or violating some unwritten law; maybe it was just the carefree morning air, with a fine breeze bringing to us the smell of dew from the cooling earth, the gentle currents carrying a taste of the sizzling heat to come, the birds still chattering, and down in the valley, over the city's hum, a church bell ringing, and in the neighbor's garden sprinklers hissing quietly away, and for no apparent reason I felt delightfully mischievous; without giving it another thought, I threw off my pajamas and, stepping across the blanket on the floor, climbed into the bed next to my father, and snuggled up to him under the sheet, naked.

It's true, I might say today, by way of explaining though by no means excusing what I did, that one of the most important things about these Sunday-morning visits was that they should occur while we were still half asleep, so that when waking for real, when it was really morning, wrapped in the warmth of my parents' bodies, I could experience the pleasantly deceptive feeling of waking someplace other than where I'd gone to sleep, so that I could marvel at this self-created little miracle and, semiconscious, imitate the same commingling of time and place that dreams so effortlessly carry out on their own, but while, as I say, this can serve neither to explain nor excuse, it's not negligible either, especially when we bear in mind that the end of our childhood is generally thought to be at hand when these cruel little games vanish in a benevolent oblivion, when every part of our being has learned to suppress our secret desires and dreams, and with grim determination we adjust to the set of paltry possibilities which the conventions of social existence offer to us as reality, but a child does not have much of a choice, since he's forced to adhere almost like an anarchist to the laws of his own nature — and we're ready to admit that we consider these no less real or reasonable — and at this point perhaps does not yet make a scrupulous distinction between the laws of the night and those of the day, and even now we're very sensitive to this will to keep things whole; the child must feel his way carefully between the acceptable and unacceptable; we remain children as long as we feel the urge to keep crossing this border and to learn, through other people's reactions to us and through our often tragic confrontations with our own nature, the alleged place, time, and name of things; at the same time, we must also master that sacred system of hypocritical lies and deceptions, subterfuges, pleasantly false appearances, subterranean passages, quietly opening and closing doors of secret labyrinths which will allow us to fulfill, besides the so-called real desires, our true, even more real desires; this is what is called a child's education, and we are writing a Bildungsroman, after all, so, without beating about the bush, and it's precisely the sacred ambiguity of the educational process that prompts us to express our secret thoughts, let's say then clearly that sometimes it's by grabbing our father's cock that we can most precisely gauge morality, whose dictates, despite all our compulsions and good intentions, we can never fully obey; when I awakened again that morning, my naked body lying on his, embracing him in his moist sleep and fumbling in his chest hair, I almost felt as if I were deceiving myself, not him, as if I had to deceive myself to believe that by clinging to his back, his buttocks, entwining my legs in his, I could feel the meeting of our nakedness, yet this was in fact what I woke to in that second awakening, and I was surprised and delighted that in this very brief and deep sleep our limbs had gotten so entangled that it took long moments for my senses to sort them out, and at the same time I couldn't help realizing that it was I who had arranged the awakening this way, consciously, though the act also had deeper, hazier elements, which I was trying to explore and indefinitely prolong, since they felt so pleasant and gave me that sense of wholeness in which desire and imagination can mingle harmoniously with deception and crafty manipulation; and then, without opening my eyes, feigning sleep, playing hide-and-seek with myself, I began to slide my fingers slowly, very slowly toward his belly, waiting intently for the skin to quiver under my touch, for the spittle in his mouth to glisten, to see if he would just snort once and go on sleeping, but while I was filching this lovely sensation for myself, it dawned on me that I was lying in the warmth my mother had left behind, taking her place — or, the feeling I was stealing, I was stealing from her.

It was as if I had to touch Mother with my mouth and Father with my hand.

And on his belly my hand had to open if it wanted to press down on his firm protrusion.

From there it was just one more downward slide, hindered momentarily in his pubic hair, and then I was pressing my palm over his genitals.

The moment had two very distinct parts.

When his body moved, not indifferently, willingly even, and he awakened.

And when with a sudden violent jerk he pulled away and let out an ear-splitting scream.

As when one finds a clammy toad in his warm bed.

By morning our sleep deepens, coarsens, and if I hadn't roused him from this deep morning sleep, he might have had a chance to realize that he was the hero of that same Bildungsroman in which nothing that is human can be alien, so that on the one hand what happened was not so unusual as to elicit his most violent feelings, and on the other, if he didn't want his impulsive response to have incalculably serious consequences, if he didn't want to elicit a similarly violent response from me but, as a reasonable educator, wanted to achieve a positive effect, he would have acted with much greater understanding and tactful shrewdness, for he must have known what every human being over forty can be expected to know, especially a man, namely, that everyone must at least once, literally or figuratively, symbolically or with one's bare hands, touch that organ; at least once everyone must violate his father's modesty — to keep it inviolable perhaps? — yes, everyone does it, one way or another, even if the ordeal leaves him no strength to admit the act even to himself, the denial being dictated by natural self-defense and a moral sense that surfaces only in extreme situations; but Father was startled out of sleep and because of his first, instinctive move must have felt betrayed by his own nature and could do little else but scream.

"What's got into you? What are you doing?"

And he kicked me out of bed with such force I landed on the floor on their blanket.

For a long time afterward my inner world was ruled by the silence of criminals, the mute, tense silence of anticipation which, as one waits for consequences and retribution, makes the act seem more irrevocable and therefore somewhat wonderful and thrilling, but no punishment was forthcoming; no matter how closely I watched them, I could detect no indication that he even told Mother about the incident, though in other situations when I was caught in some mischief, they always tried to present a united front, though I must say they never succeeded so well that I couldn't discern some subtle differences in their positions; now, however, they professed complete innocence and seemed truly united, acting as if nothing had happened, as if I had dreamed it all, both the touch and the scream, and while waiting for the spectacular retribution I failed to notice the consequence, far more serious than any punishment could have been; looking back now, as a reasonable adult, I ask myself just what sort of punishment I was expecting: a bloody, merciless beating? what kind of punishment can be invented in a case like this, when it seems that a male child has fallen in love with his own father? isn't the terrible, unrequitable, physically and emotionally devastating love itself the greatest punishment? at any rate, what I failed to notice, maybe couldn't have noticed, or what I had to pretend not to notice, was that after the incident Father became even more aloof, carefully avoiding every occasion that might have called for physical contact; he didn't kiss me, didn't touch me, and, come to think of it, didn't hit me either, as though he felt that even a slap might be construed as responding to my love for him; he withdrew himself from me — but so inconspicuously, his reserve so perfect, lacking all outward signs, no doubt some great fear making it so perfect, that I myself sensed no connection between his behavior and its cause, and maybe he didn't either; I even managed to forget the underlying cause, just as I forgot that I had discovered him in bed with Maria Stein in the maid's room — maybe he forgot that, too; the only threat that remained with me was the unassimilable knowledge that this was the kind of man my father was: not enough of a stranger to leave me unresponsive and not affectionate enough to love me; so when he opened the door to let me into the bathroom, what I could read in his unsmiling face, in the blatant nakedness of his body, was this reserve and mistrust, a well-disguised shyness, a fearfulness, and a reluctance, too, indicating that he was opening the door only at my mother's urging though it didn't sit well with him, he didn't find my peeking and eavesdropping so easily forgivable; instead of this daring family coziness he would have preferred to send me back to my bed—"All right, out!" he might have said, and as far as he was concerned that would have been the end of it, but vis-à-vis Mother he appeared to be at least as vulnerable and defenseless as I was with him, which of course was a source of comfort to me, and if there was the slightest hope of my ever squeezing in between the two of them, it could only be through this tiny opening afforded by his willingness to please Mother, to gain her favor, to satisfy her needs; I had no direct way of reaching Father.

"Close the door," he said, and turned around to sit back in the tub, words that for me, still unable to decide whether to go in and still standing motionless in the doorway, were an ambiguous gift but a gift nonetheless, and even the reluctance in his voice, intended more for Mother than for me, could not completely spoil my happiness, because I had won without hoping for victory; and the sight of his body turning sideways was yet another new experience, a striking flash, to be enjoyed and suffered only until he lowered himself into the water; if earlier I said that from the front his body looked perfect, well-proportioned, attractive, and beautiful, I now have to add something that natural modesty makes even more difficult to articulate, or could it be that it isn't modesty at all but the strange desire to see our parents, in both body and mind, as the most perfect creatures on earth, even when they are not? is that the reason that experience forces us to see beauty in ugliness or, if we cannot abandon our inextinguishable yearning for perfection, at least to be more forgiving and understanding of imperfection, learning from the human form that everything seemingly perfect also contains a tendency for the distorted, the twisted, and the deformed? is this, after all, what gives our feelings their unique character and flavor? and not only because no single human being can embody perfect harmony of form but also because perfect and imperfect always go hand in hand, are inseparable, and if, disregarding the most obvious imperfections, we still try to worship a person as perfect, is it simply our imagination playing tricks on us?

When I looked at my father sideways, it turned out that whatever had seemed perfect from the front now appeared misshapen: his shoulder blades protruded prominently from his bent back, he looked stooped even when standing straight, and if I weren't afraid of the word, I'd say he was only a breath away from being a hunchback, yes, a hunchback, which we usually find exceedingly repulsive; I'm convinced it was pure accident that he wasn't, as if halfway through its work nature could not decide whether to fashion an ideal or a grotesque human form and left him to his fate, and he, recognizing this fate, tried to blot out or at least correct the effects of this dark hoax of nature, though his efforts were only partially successful, despite his undoubtedly very real suffering and almost unseemly industriousness and zeal: the body, the human form, however devoutly we may expound in our Christian humility on the externality of the flesh and the primacy of the soul, is so potent a given that already at the moment of our birth, it becomes an immutable attribute.

But with the utter partiality of a lover, I loved this, too, liked inhaling beauty and ugliness in the same breath and experiencing with equal sensitivity and intensity both attraction and repulsion; his imperfections made him perfect to me — nothing could better account for his obstinate seriousness, his formidable alertness, the eagerness with which he went after everything he judged wayward, unlawful, criminal, and therefore ugly and perverse than his slight flaw, his tiny would-be hump, in the absence of which he would have become just another pretty face and no more; but this way he was a man forever on guard, emotionally rather dour, physically somewhat cold (for all his sexual excesses), and very intelligent, as if in the retreat forced on him by his physical attributes, his attentiveness longing for but unable to cope with tenderness had grown so acute that no plan or motive, however cunningly concealed, could escape his scrutiny, and the energy lost in that retreat returned most aggressively in his sensitivity and intellect, enabling him to uncover the subtlest of connections; he was perfect then in trusting his intuition to let his abilities and natural gifts complement one another; one could only rarely discover in him an insincere attempt to be what he was not, and though then I knew very little about what the work of a state prosecutor actually entailed, I couldn't imagine a more appropriate setting for that body; I liked to see him encased in the severity of his dark gray suit, his long fingers gathering up his papers from a gleaming desktop under the glare of chandeliers turned on even during the day, the cut of his suit being perhaps only a slight deception, in the cleverly placed shoulderpads that compensated for the irregular curve of his back; in the long marble-faced courthouse corridors there were usually very few people around, now and then a messenger hurrying past with heavy file folders, and sometimes small clusters of people standing about in front of one of the huge doors, taking not the slightest notice of one another; dignified, dusty boredom prevailed except when clanking footsteps broke the silence and grew louder until in one of the bends in the winding corridor a handcuffed prisoner appeared led by two guards, only to disappear behind one of those huge brown doors and then enter the courtroom; I liked to see his back receding down the dim corridor, in his back rather than in the more ordinary beauty of the rest of his body, where everything that I felt was refined, distinguished, and intelligent in him seemed to be concentrated — to complete the picture, I should say something about his shapely and muscular backside, whose graceful curve was quite feminine, and his firm thighs, and the protuberant veins branching off under the golden hairs of his leg, and the arching foot with its long, delicate toes — but still, it was his back; his walk was soft, supple, vigorous, like that of a beast delighted to feel in the soles of its feet the limber, ready weight of its body, but Father seemed to carry his intellectual burdens and worries, which I imagined had to do with pursuing justice, not in his feet but on his back, as if his strength lay in the curvature of his back, and I so very much wanted to be like him, to possess his imperiousness, his strength, not just the beauty and symmetry leading to and radiating from his loins but his rarefied spiritual ugliness, too, so for a while I tried to imitate his stoop as I walked down the far less impressive corridors of my school the way I had seen him walk in the courthouse.

But then I decided to walk into the bathroom, after all, and I closed the door just as he told me.

He sat back in the tub, and Mother, who just then re-emerged from the water, started laughing; their movements spilled more water onto the floor.

"Just throw off your pajamas and join us," she said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

And when I climbed into the tub and positioned myself between their drawn-up knees, the water overflowed again, the bathroom was awash, slippers began to float, which made all three of us laugh.

It was one of those sudden outbursts of laughter, a spontaneous eruption that dissolved the residue of suspicion and fear and timidity in us, canceling out every warranted and unwarranted anxiety, tore that scrim, that veil between external reality and the more powerful inner verities to which I alluded earlier, seemed to liberate our bodies from the confines of their weight and inertia, lifting us into a higher sphere where there is free passage between the reality of the body and that of our desires; there we were, in a tubful of cooling, lukewarm water, three naked bodies— though only a single mouth seemed to do the laughing, as though the rollicking laughter with its undertones of sly devilry had burst forth from the same giant mouth, as if the identity of our liberated senses endowed us with one common mouth! — and caught between Father's outspread knees, I had my feet between Mother's open thighs under the sudsy and murky water that was gently lifting her large breasts, making them float and bob on the surface; then Father pushed me, and Mother pushed me back, and with each push the water sloshed and overflowed, that's what made us laugh actually, this bit of silliness; at the same time, the giant mouth seemed to be swallowing the three naked bodies, devouring them, disgorging them, and sending them down a dark gullet of pleasure, only to bring them up again in tune with the rhythm of laughter as the laughter burst, rippled, and soared, only to dip and scoop up from still deeper layers of the body the hidden and hitherto unimagined treasures of its pleasure and then, with even greater lung efforts and from an even greater height, to let loose its indigestible joy just as the water kept running over and out of the tub.

But in all fairness, for the sake of truth and completeness, I should correct any impression that my life at that time consisted solely of blank despair, shameful cruelties and defeats, and unbearable, yes, unbearable suffering; to counteract the admittedly one-sided nature of my account I must stress that it wasn't so, really wasn't, because joyful, pleasurable experiences were just as much part of my life, and perhaps the reason suffering leaves a deeper mark is because suffering, relying on the mind's ability to think and therefore brood and mull things over, stretches out time, while true joy, avoiding conscious reflection and confining itself to sensory impulses, grants itself and us only the time of its actual existence, which makes it seem fatefully accidental and contingent, always separate and wrenched from suffering, so that while suffering leaves long, complicated stories behind in our memory, happiness leaves but flashes in its wake — but away with this analysis getting bogged down in the details of details, and away, too, with the philosophy that seeks the meaning of details, though we may need it if we want to ascertain the richness of our inner life, if it is rich why not take pleasure in observing it? yet precisely because this richness is infinite, and the infinite belongs among the incomprehensible things of this world, we are tempted, in our hasty analysis, to pronounce a perfectly ordinary, ultimately natural event to be the root cause of all our injuries, obsessions, mental illness — let's say it, the cause of our disabilities — and we do this because we lose sight of the totality of an event in favor of certain arbitrarily chosen details, and terrified by the abundance of these, we call a halt to our search at just the point where we should go further, our terror creating a scapegoat, erecting little sacrificial altars for it and stabbing the air in mock ceremony, causing more confusion than if we hadn't thought about ourselves at all; happy are the poor in spirit! — so let's not think, let's submit freely and without preconceived notions to the pleasant sensation of sitting on the floor next to Mother's sickbed, our head leaning on the cool silk counterpane so that our lips can rest on the bare skin of her arm; we can feel her delicate fingers in our hair, a slight tremble, a pleasant tingle of our scalp, because in her embarrassment she's dug her other hand into our hair as if to console us, to see if she can lessen the impact of her words with this idle gesture, and though the tingling slowly takes possession of our entire body, what she has said cannot be taken back so easily, since we, too, have suspected that our father may not be our father, and if she couldn't decide between the two men, this suspicion may become a certainty, but about that, understandably, nothing further can be said, so let us be quiet, and then we may feel precisely that everything her words evoked in us as memories — and that have already subsided, however important and decisive they may be — are only in the background of our emotions and true interests, because in the space where we are trying to grasp them and reflect on them, where real events are taking place, there we are completely alone, and they — those two men and Mother — do not and cannot have anything to do with it.

And if what she said didn't leave me cold, it wasn't because it was important for me to know which of the two men was my father, a question that was exciting, to be sure, teasing, titillating in its immodesty, above all, a delicious secret, like the picture I kept in mind of the man I knew to be my father with that other woman in the maid's room, but still, I'd say the question itself was not of primary importance, it could be dismissed, forgotten, relegated to the background, like the broad sweep of the horizon in a painting of a quiet, misty meadow at dusk, in other words, a mere frame that fades away, undeniably part of the picture, but the picture itself, our picture, begins and ends where we are, where we assume our position in it: our view of existence can have only one center, and that is our body, the pure form of being that makes this view possible and provides strength, authority, and security, so that ultimately — I emphasize, ultimately — nothing else should interest us but our body in all its possible aspects and manifestations; Mother's last sentence silenced me and ruled out further questions, mainly because it was like a not quite inadvertent allusion to everything that had been preoccupying me; I couldn't make decisions, yet felt compelled to decide, just as she did— only from her sentence it was already a guilty conscience staring back at me, stemming from an inability to decide, which, I knew, would last a lifetime: I was facing my own future filled with threatening chaos and confusion, though viewing it with the serenity of one who already knew he couldn't hope to decide what is undecidable, in which regard her confession was quite liberating, as if she had sensed that she was going to die soon and, as her last will, meant to warn me not to experiment with making decisions when no solutions were possible and to allow uncontrollable events to be my only joy, as if real freedom consisted of nothing but letting ourselves be affected, without protest, by occurrences that choose to manifest themselves in us; consequently, for me, then, she wasn't like a mother, whom we expect to shield us with the warmth of her body from the rigors of the real world, but like an experienced person who has returned to herself after many adventures and indulgences and is therefore necessarily cruel and cold, a person with whom I had very little to do because common ties are defined by warmth, yet with whom I was in every way identical because, regardless of differences in age and sex, the occurrences within us were identical.

It was as though she was talking about something she could not have known anything about.

Our silence spoke of this, too.

And then I did manage to tell her something about which I had never spoken to her before.

It wasn't real speaking, of course, not a single word being formed or articulated in the deep silence, and lasted only as long as it took my mouth, breathing tiny kisses, to inch its way from the soft curve of her arm up to her shoulder, but "Girls like me very much," I would have whispered in the choked voice of a lover's confession meant just for her, "they like me more than any of the other boys," I would have whispered, as if to prove something, and also a bit ashamed of this surprising, inappropriate, ever boastful declaration, because everything we say out loud about ourselves, even if only to ourselves, needs immediate, disappointingly ambiguous amplification, so I would have said this, because they didn't like me that way—"I know, and I'm ashamed that they like me not the way girls like boys but as if I were a girl, too, which I'm not, of course, I'm a boy, but this difference, this thing that separates me from other boys, I can't help being proud of," and I would have asked her to help me, because I was saying it all wrong and desperately wanted to say it right, and the plural didn't mean girls in general — there is no such thing anyway — but the three of them, Hédi, Maja, and Livia, they were the girls, and in the same way, when I thought about boys I saw Prém, Kálmán, and Krisztián as belonging together; if I had to decide which sex I was more attracted to, buffeted between these two dependent yet separate trinities of the sexes and trying to find my place, I'd have to have said that women and girls were dearer to me though men and boys attracted me more.

I'd have said all this, if it had been possible to talk openly of such matters.

But leaning on Mother's shoulder I remembered what it was like to come from the garden and silently step into the Prihodas' spacious dining room, where their maid, Szidónia, was clearing the table, and to watch for a while, without a sound, as she got down on her knees, her buttocks thrust toward me, to pick bread crumbs off the floor.

Perhaps it was the heavy fragrance of Mother's skin that made me reveal all my secrets to her, things I experienced independently but which still had to do with her, somehow.

And when the maid finally noticed me I put my finger to my lips, warning her to be quiet, say nothing, nobody should know I was here, not yet, I wanted to be able to surprise Maja, and she stayed as she was, motionless, fortunately unaware of the deeper meaning of my precaution, thinking it was a prank, some innocent prank, after all I was such an amusing fellow, wasn't I? and my smile, my playful plea, made her my accomplice; very carefully then, not to make the floor creak, I started walking toward her — Here comes that rascal again, her beaming eyes seemed to say — and, watching me approach, she burst out laughing.

I always had to think of something new; old tricks were good for starters, but I had to devise something extraordinary to heighten the effect, which was not so hard as it first seemed; I had to remain refined in my little acts of rudeness, gauge precisely the opportunities afforded by the given moment.

And in this silence I went as far as not saying hello to her, knew that only the most extreme gestures were effective, sometimes would only nod, but another time would suddenly grab her hand and kiss it, she'd slap me lightly on the back of my head: that is how our contacts remained silent, even when free of playful smacks and cuffs, still more expressive than words could have made them: we were giving, exchanging signals, a form of communication that suited us perfectly, why spoil it with mere words?

No need to concentrate on anything else: I had only to look at the yellow flecks in her gray cat's eyes — I knew that every premeditated and self-conscious move was too artful, therefore patently false — to establish contact between those flecks and my instinctive gestures in order to learn whether I was on the right track or not; now, for example, her loud laughter was a kind of revenge for my imposing silence on her, but she laughed out loud, and that called for reprisal; our furtive pleasures demanded these little reprisals, which gave us a chance silently to kick, bite, scratch, and furiously pummel each other, and then, very slowly, I too went down on my knees — no need to mimic her openly, she got the message! — simply replicating, mirroring, the funny, somewhat humiliating position her body had assumed; I knelt next to her, among the legs of a couple of chairs, as if to say, You are like a dog here, yes, that's what you are, a dog.

Szidónia was a fat girl, her thick brown hair pinned up in a braid, her oily skin glistened, her eyes were bright, and every move she made was disarmingly, awkwardly childlike; there were dark stains of perspiration on her white blouse under her arms; I knew I had to do something with this penetrating, enduring odor: but I am your dog, I intimated, and, sniffing noisily, stuck my nose into her armpit.

Her body dissolved in silent pleasure, she rolled under the table, and I followed the moist, wet smell until she bit into my neck, hard; it hurt.

Now this way, now that, whichever way we played these little games, they were only the antechamber of pleasure.

Because in the inner sanctum, deep inside her room, poring over her books and notes and resting her head on her hand and chewing on the end of her pencil, sat Maja, her bare legs crossed under the table, and she kept swinging them, shuffling them in an irritatingly unpredictable, nervous rhythm.

Thick shrubs grew tall outside her window, old trees lowered their branches like a curtain, the air in her room was always filled with green stirrings, green flickers on the wall, as the leaves outside floated and fluttered.

"Livi isn't here yet?" I asked quietly, making sure I opened with a crucial question, a confession really, letting her know right away that she wasn't that important to me: she may have been waiting for me, and now pretending not to be, but I hadn't come because of her.

She didn't look at me; she always made as though she didn't catch my words the first time, always sat in some contorted position, and not so much read her book as scrutinized the pages from afar, with a certain revulsion and wariness, keeping them as far away as she could, as another person might look at a painting, taking in both the details and the composition as a whole, furrows of concentration creasing her brow, her dark brown eyes round with a constant, level astonishment, all the while chewing and twisting her pencil with her beautiful white teeth, chewing and twisting it again; and if my presence registered in her consciousness this was indicated only by a slowing in the shuffle of her feet under the chair, a less active nibbling on her pencil, but needless to say, these were signs not of inattention but of the most concentrated attention — these monotonous, mechanical motions enabled her to absorb knowledge far removed from her physical being — and if she finally managed to tear herself away from what she'd been so intent upon, she looked at me with the same deep, astonished interest; I must have seemed like another object to her, every object being remarkable in its own way, as slowly, very slowly, she lifted her head, the furrows of her brow disappeared, she had to pull the pencil from between her teeth, her mouth stayed open, and her eager, attentive look did not change.

"You can see for yourself," she said casually, but she didn't fool me, I knew she enjoyed reporting painful news.

"She's not coming today?" I asked, needlessly, only to emphasize that I hadn't come to see her, let there be no misunderstanding about that.

"I'm getting a little tired of Livi, maybe she won't show up today, but Kálmán said we'd see her anyway, because Krisztián is doing some kind of theater."

She might as well have stuck a thorn in me; of course nobody had told me about this, and she knew they meant to leave me out of it.

"We'll see them, then?"

"I guess so," she said innocently, as though the plural included me as well, and for a moment I almost believed it.

"Did she say that I should go? That you should invite me?"

"Why, didn't she tell you?" With just a touch of mock indulgence, she savored my embarrassed silence.

"She did mention something," I said, knowing well she could see through my lie; she seemed to feel a little sorry for me.

"Why shouldn't you come if you feel like it?"

But I wanted no part of her pity. "Then our whole day is shot again," I said angrily, inadvertently betraying myself, which of course pleased her no end.

"Mother is out."

"And Szidónia?"

She shrugged, which she did with inimitable charm, raising a shoulder just a little, but somehow this made her whole body sag, reaching the limits of its inertia, and after an indefinable moment of transition she relaxed again, flung her pencil on the desk, and stood up.

"Come on, let's not waste any more time."

She acted as if she really wasn't interested in anything else, but I couldn't shake my anger so easily, and besides, I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at, since all I knew was that once again something had happened behind my back which I had to scream out of my system.

"Just tell me this one thing, will you: when did you talk to Kálmán?"

"I didn't," she said with a gleam in her eye, almost singing the words.

"You couldn't have, because he walked home with me."

"You see — so why don't you just leave it at that?" she said, grinning pertly, eager to let me know she was enjoying my annoyance.

"But may I ask how you found out about their plans, then?"

"That's my business, don't you think?"

"So that means you have your own little plans, right?"

"Right."

"And of course that's where you want to go."

"Why not? I haven't decided yet."

"Because you don't want to miss out on anything, right?"

"I'm not going to tell you, so don't get your hopes up."

"I'm not interested."

"So much the better."

"I'm an idiot for coming here."

There was a moment's silence, then very quietly and hesitantly she said, "Want me to tell you?"

"I couldn't care less. Keep it to yourself."

She stepped closer to me, very close, but the look in her eyes faltered, turned opaque, as though she'd been deeply touched by something, and that fleeting uncertainty made it clear that she didn't see what she was looking at, didn't see me, didn't see my neck, although she seemed to be looking at it, at the bite mark, but that's not what she saw; in her thoughts she was roaming that secret region which she wanted to hide from me and which I was so curious to see, to know, and above all, I wanted to feel Kálmán in her, feel her every move, hear the words she had whispered in his ear; then, hesitantly, as if trying to convince herself I was really there yet not fully realizing what she was doing, she pinched together the collar of my shirt, tugging at it absentmindedly, and lowering her voice to an ingratiating breathlike whisper, she drew me even closer.

"The only reason I am going to tell you is that we promised we wouldn't keep any secrets from each other."

And like someone who has managed to hurdle the first and most serious obstacle posed by her own sense of shame, she sighed, even smiled a little, using this smile to find her way back to my face and, looking straight into my eyes, continue what she had started: "He wrote to me, sent me a letter, Livia brought it over last night, that I should come, too, on account of the costumes, you see, and that we'd meet in the woods this afternoon."

Now I had the upper hand, because I knew that this wasn't the whole truth.

"You're lying."

"And you're completely off your rocker."

"You think I'm a fool and can't tell when you're lying to me?"

I grabbed her wrist and simply yanked her hand off me, she had no business pawing me like that, but I didn't let go of her completely, I just pushed her away — she shouldn't be the one, certainly not with her transparent little lies, to decide just how close we should get — and I made this move though her affection expressed by such proximity, letting me feel her breath on my mouth, and even her dangerous lying that might have deceived just about anybody else pleased me very much, yet it was as if I had realized that the body, seductive and warm though it may be, never wants to possess another without attaching some moral conditions to this possession, and that precisely for the sake of a perfect and total possession, so-called truth is more important than the warm body or its momentary closeness; this truth, of course, does not exist, yet one must strive for it, for this inner truth of the body, even if it turns out to be only provisional, ephemeral; and so I acted like a cool-headed manipulator, deliberately and ruthlessly interfering with the process in the interest of some dimly perceived goal, rejecting the body in the hope of regaining it more completely sometime in the uncertain future.

There is no harsher move than pushing someone away, deliberately, contemptuously: I lost her mouth, I gave up my attraction to her beauty in favor of a deeper attraction, but I did it in a shrewd, calculating way, so that she should be even more beautiful when I got her back, when she'd be all mine, because it was my rival, of course, the usurper, the stranger who was also my double, Kálmán, whom I had to evict from her mouth when I insisted that this perfectly formed mouth should not lie; therefore, I hoped to gain as much through the harshness of my gesture as I had to lose by it.

"Forget it, it's not that important," I said to her mercilessly.

"Then what d'you want from me?" she cried out, choking with anger, and snatched her wrist out of my hand.

"Nothing. You're ugly when you lie."

Of course lying did not change her looks — if anything, her wounded feelings made her more beautiful; again she shrugged her shoulders, as if she were not at all interested in how I happened to see her at any given moment, a nonchalant shrug that was in such stark contrast with what she must have been thinking that she had to lower her lids, chastely, her wide-open, always astonished eyes disappearing behind the lazy, thick lashes, leaving her mouth free to rule her face.

I couldn't have wished for anything more at this point than to watch her motionless mouth: perhaps what made this mouth so unusual was that the upper lip, a perfect twin of the lower one, arched straight toward the little groove running down from the nose to the edge of the lips, without the two usual peaks breaking its rise or the tiny hollows at the mouth's edge interrupting its downward slope; the symmetrical pair of lips formed a perfect oval.

A mouth ready to whistle, sing hauntingly, or chatter endlessly, and full cheeks framed by a mass of springy brown curls all added to her cheerful, carefree, and unself-conscious demeanor; she turned around and without relaxing her narrow shoulders still raised in a shrug headed for the door, but then unexpectedly changed course and, instead of walking out, threw herself on the bed.

It wasn't a real bed but a kind of divan that doubled as a bed where during the day a heavy Persian throw rug covered the bedclothes; it was soft and warm, her motionless body fairly sank in it, clad in the maroon, flower-patterned dress she had filched for the afternoon from her mother's closet, which was in fact a tiny sunlit room with built-in white floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, all filled with pleasant-smelling dresses, one of our favorite places for rummaging and exploration; her bare legs, dangling helplessly from the divan, almost glowed in this stuffy dim room, and what made the sight even more inviting was that her skirt rode up to her thighs, and as she lay there, hiding her head in the protective embrace of her arms, she began to cry, making her shoulders, back, and even gently curving backside shake and quiver.

Her tears didn't move me much, I was familiar with every possible variant of these crying sessions: the simple whimpers, the even, inconsolable sniffling, and the furiously rising huge outbursts that she invariably carried to unbearably ugly, sloppy, snotty crescendos of bawling, followed by slow, talkative denouements, quiet shivers, stifled tremors of exhaustion that made her body spongy-soft and relaxed until, without noticeable transition, she found her way back to her usual self, which was, if possible, even stronger and more confident — and fully satisfied.

This familiarity with her crying styles didn't mean of course that I could deny her my sympathy, for I knew she was capable of crying even when I wasn't looking; she had given detailed accounts of her solitary crying sessions often enough, lacing them with a healthy dose of self-mockery, including the candidly revealing admission that crying, an unabashed and self-indulgent flaunting of pain, was no small pleasure, and what's more, she liked to cry in Livia's company, too, finding her a similarly sympathetic, gentle, somewhat more objective provider of solace than I; still, something about her crying was directed only at me, some playful, exaggerated quality made to order, as it were, a theatricality prompted by my presence; her cries were part and parcel of our mutual dishonesty, an important element in the elaborate system of lies and pretenses that nevertheless had to be enacted with the utmost care and conviction, the very fraudulent games which we played in the guise of total honesty and openness; it was as if with these cries she was trying out, in front of me and for me, the part of the weak, helpless, easily injured, refined woman she would one day become, although in reality she was cold and hard, calculatingly cruel and shrewd, and while in beauty no match for Hédi, she acted so very tough and aggressive, so stubbornly possessive of everything and everyone, that she seemed to dominate us even more than Hédi did with her beauty, although that, too, was a charade, as she must have known I knew; she was rehearsing a role, and those flounced and frilly dresses and silky fabrics for which we both had developed a deep liking were the appropriately feminine, external supports for the role, and stealing them added a further element of excitement to her clandestine acts of transformation, because she wanted to be exactly like her mother; I started toward the divan with the most confident steps, for in my assigned role I had to be strong, calm, understanding, a trifle brutal even, in short, absolutely masculine, a role promising so many playful pleasures that, however false it was, I had no problem assuming it.

And perhaps it was this deliberate readiness for falsity that made me different from other boys.

I was so much in tune with the source of her femininity, I had the impression I was just playing at being a boy, and my playacting might be exposed at any time.

As if there was no dividing line between my maleness and my femaleness.

It seemed to me it wasn't I who did this or that, I wasn't the one who acted, but only chose between two pre-prepared patterns of action inside me, one for boys and one for girls, and since I was a boy, I chose the male pattern, naturally, but could just as easily have chosen the other one: I could now ask her, for example, in a rough, no-nonsense voice, what in God's name was the matter with her, though I knew perfectly well what the matter was, and if she didn't answer I could demand even more forcefully that she stop the hysterics, tell her sarcastically that her idiotic bawling and hollering was a sheer waste of time, or I could start swearing and make as though her crying annoyed the hell out of me, which it didn't; or I could switch, take the part of a girl friend and tell her that if she still wanted to see her darling Kálmán, that disgusting fat slob— and that was what she wanted to do, wasn't it? — though I had no idea what she could see in him, his name was enough to make me puke, but if she still wanted to see him, she'd better mind her lovely face and not mess it up with all that disgusting blubbering, because then he wouldn't like her nearly as much as she would like him to; all the while Maja, trusting herself to the undulating waves in the opening movement of her crying, seemed to be waiting for just these harsh words, the precise content of the rudeness hardly mattering, just needing symbolic slaps to prove to herself that she was indeed weak, as I needed to swear to prove I was strong, and as soon as she got these bracing slaps, she released the pent-up energies of a well-practiced performance, turned on her side, lowered her arms, and, switching to deep-throated bawling, finally showed me her face, so contorted by tears and screaming that it deserved some real sympathy.

As if there was a degree of falsity where the false began to appear genuine.

"What do you all want from me? Why are you screaming? What do you want? Why? Everybody, everybody keeps tormenting me!" she screamed, her scream turning into a howl that sounded quite real, giving me a perversely wonderful pleasure since her howling had to do with both Kálmán and me: it was her wavering and vacillating between the two of us that was real, though for me it still remained a game I could observe from the outside; but now, rolling back on her stomach, she buried her head in her arms again and began her rise, this time without the slightest inhibition, into regions of higher, truer, more real sobbing; I stood over her, fascinated and mesmerized, as she manipulated, slowly, gradually, with finesse, what may have seemed like a game a moment ago into a passion of suffering, and though her body at first resisted, having no real cause for suffering, and refused to cooperate, now it did, and the clever maneuver worked: sunk deep in the soft bed, she was suffering, she was trembling and writhing, this was no longer just a game; yet still I made no move, still tried to preserve the calm air of a confident male, did not reach out toward her, didn't touch her or comfort her, though the sight truly shocked me, because she kept tearing and biting the blanket and, like an epileptic, jerking and tossing her head while her legs dangled lifelessly over the edge of the bed, and she seemed to be having an attack, trapped in the unrelieved tension between total self-revelation and total self-defense; and my fear, dread, and shocked immobility hiding behind benevolent indifference were more than justified, because I was the one who wanted this to happen, I had provoked it with my words, teased the secret madness out of her so that I could feel my power over her, vanquish, in her body, that other boy within me who was too tenderly and cruelly familiar to make me truly jealous — it was all for me, then, only for me, but that voice! the shrill sobs swelling into screams seemed to be issuing not from a single source but from two different voices, as if behind the pitiful bawling, broken by the rhythmic writhing of her body, there was another, shrieking voice that grew piercingly, unrelentingly, thinner and reedier; it was unbearable, and I felt everything about to crumble and slip out of my control.

And when I lay down next to her on the soft divan, leaning over her and cautiously touching her shoulder, I was not motivated by tenderness or empathy — if anything, she disgusted me, I hated her, and feared she might go on like this forever; and though I knew all crying must come to an end sometime, its effect on me was so powerful, the sight and sound so immediate, that my former experiences failed to reassure me and I thought, Yes, she will go on like this, she won't stop, ever, whatever had been hidden and now surfaced accidentally will become permanent, and Szidónia will walk in and I'll be found out, and the neighbors will come trooping across the garden, because everybody could hear her, and they'll call a doctor, and her mother and father will come, and she'll still be carrying on in her red dress, and they'll find out that this dreadful thing was all because of me.

"Maja dear."

"Your mother's cunt, that's what's dear!"

"But what is it? Come, don't cry like this. What happened? I'm here. You know I understand. Everything. We promised, remember? You've said it yourself."

"Fuck your promise!" she said, and she rolled back toward the wall, pulling away impetuously, and I clambered after her, just to make her stop.

"I'm not going away, I only said that to get you scared, but I'm not, I promise. I'll stay right here. Come on, Maja, Maja! But you can go. If you want to, you can go. You know I always let you do what you want. Why don't you answer?" I whispered in her ear and tried to hug her, flatten myself against her, hoping that the calm of my body would somehow pass into hers.

But where was my superior manly calm by then! I was also trembling, my voice also shaking, and I didn't suspect that with faultless concentration she sensed everything and that I couldn't have given her greater satisfaction than this.

At the same time my alarmed tenderness instead of calming her frenzy oddly intensified it, and only at this point could I peer behind her madness and ascertain that, as frightful and uncontrolled as the spectacle seemed, there was plenty of sober and calculating sense left in her; I may have drawn her head close to me with a gesture disguised as one of caring attention, planning slyly to put my hand over her mouth so that no more of that sound should come out, but it was no use, we saw through each other, and she could accurately detect the deceit hidden in my gesture; her body tensed up, she flung me off her and began kicking and pummeling me, biting my fingers hard, as she kept on wailing and shrieking; her face was contorted, almost as if it had become a boy's face, hard, angular, and dirty from tear stains; and if at that moment my quaking fright had not been replaced by a bit of cunning, if I had responded to her blows and kicks with blows and kicks of my own, chances are she would have beaten me thoroughly, for though we never fought in earnest, she was probably stronger than I and, in any case, wilder and more reckless.

I didn't defend myself, I didn't even notice when she stopped screaming, what's more, I didn't try to hold her down, and I restrained myself — our relationship never had a more honest moment — I let her claw and bite and kick and scratch and tried to respond to her every move with the gentlest of touches, soft caresses and kisses that bounced off her, given the unevenness of the fight, just as her clumsy, broad-stroked, girlish punches missed me; still, I was the girl and she the boy, in this situation at least, in the way she glowered and bared her teeth and tensed her neck muscles; in the sudden silence that followed, only her loud panting, the groans of the mattress, and the thud of punches could be heard.

She tried to push me away, pressing her fist against my shoulder, off the divan, onto the floor, but when my hand clasped her naked thigh, it was as if her hate-filled resistance and raging fury had suddenly left, unexpectedly even to her, flowed out, evaporated from her limbs, and her body relaxed in an instant; as if seeing me for the first time in her life, she seemed genuinely surprised that I was so close to her and that she liked it; she opened her eyes wide again, no longer whitely insane but familiarly inquisitive.

She held her breath.

As though she was anxious not to let even her breath touch my mouth, not if we were this close, this hot.

The bare skin under my hand quivered a bit, as if she had just realized my hand was there.

And how could my hand have gotten there?

Then she burst into tears again.

As if the closeness and the warmth had brought on the tears, but now there was real pain behind them, a quiet, I'd even say wise, pain.

A pain that had no hope of finding relief in the heat of another outburst, and indeed never turned into a real cry comparable to the earlier one, but remained a quiet whimper.

Still, this voice touched me more deeply than the earlier voices, and I somehow caught it from her: a long-drawn-out whine did leave my throat though my cry could not burst forth but only choked me, because in my chest and in my thighs a firm and eager but also paralyzing force, preventing total yielding or weakening, was pushing, thrusting me toward her; if before I had assumed or suspected she was foisting a nonexistent, imaginary pain on her body, using it to deceive and distract me so that she could obtain my surrender, I now realized this assumption was unfounded, because something was causing her real pain — I was the cause of her pain, the fact that she loved me as well.

I edged closer to her, and rather than objecting to this she helped me by slipping her arm under my shoulder, gently hugging me to herself, and simply to return the gesture I let my hand slide up her thigh, my fingers slip under her panties.

And we lay there like this.

Her burning face on my shoulder.

We seemed to be lolling in some spacious, soft and slippery wetness where one doesn't know how time passes but it's of no importance anyway.

With my arms I was rocking her body as if wanting to rock both of us to sleep.

With my little sister, too, I used to lie like this, in a time beyond memory, under the desk, when I was experimenting with those pins and she, looking for a place to hide and finding it with me, screamed in pain and terror as she flung herself on me, as if by entrusting her pitiful, twisted, and by all appearances disgusting body to me, she was trying to say she'd understood my cruel games and was even grateful to me, since I was the only one who, through those games, had found a language she could use; that's how my sister and I kept rocking each other, half-sitting, half-lying on the cool parquet floor, until we fell asleep in each other's arms in the late-afternoon twilight.

"One day you'll realize you've been tormenting me for no good reason," she whispered later, her trembling lips almost touching my ear, "because you never believe me, but there's nobody I love as much as I love you, nobody."

She sounded like that other voice, out of that long-ago afternoon, straight out of the body of my little sister, a shrill but lilting voice, tickling my ears; it felt as though I was hugging my little sister's formless body, knowing it was slender Maja I was holding.

In the meantime, she kept buzzing and bubbling in my ear, gratefully, softly, unstoppably.

"Like yesterday, I told him he could bully all he wanted, you were my number-one love and not him, I told him straight out; I told him you were good and kind, and not mean like them, and I know he's doing it with me just so he could tell Krisztián about it, I told him he's definitely number two."

She stopped for a moment, as if she didn't dare come out with it, but then, like a whiff of hot air, assailed my ear: "But you are my baby, and I love to play with you so much! and you mustn't be mad when I pretend to be in love with him. He interests me in some ways, yes, but it's all a game, I'm only using him to tease you, but there's nobody, nobody I love as much as you, believe me, certainly not him, because he's a brute beast and not nice to me at all. Sometimes we could make believe you're my son. I often thought I'd like to have a little boy just like you; I can't imagine him any other way but as a sweet, kind, innocent, blond-haired little boy."

She fell silent again, her gushing coming up against real emotions.

"But you can be a bastard, too, you know, and that's why I cry all the time, because you want to know everything and won't let me have my own little secrets, even though you and I have the greatest, the biggest secret of all, and you can't possibly think I'd ever betray you, because that secret is more important to me than anything else, and will be forever. But you keep secrets from me, too; don't you think I know that it's not Livia you're after but Hédi, and that you don't give a shit about me?"

Nothing changed, we kept rocking and swaying, but something urged me to let myself be seduced completely by this voice; it seemed that I was no longer rocking her, but that she was rocking me with her voice, lulling me, and I had to keep us on the threshold of sleep.

"Now you can tell me about it," I said in a loud voice, trying to rouse myself from the pleasant torpor.

"What?" she asked just as loud.

"What you two did yesterday evening."

"You mean night."

"Night?"

"Yes, night."

"Are you going to lie to me again?"

"Well, almost night, late in the evening, very late."

It sounded like the beginning of another digression, which interested me as much as the story itself, but she didn't continue, and I stopped rocking her.

"Tell me."

But she didn't reply, and somehow even her body fell silent in my arms.

Melchior s Room under the Eaves

With soft lively steps he moved about the large room like someone going through very familiar motions, each step he took making the all-white, ostentatiously white, floorboards creak slightly, his pointed black shoes looking especially worn and battered on this startlingly white floor and on the thick, deep-red rug; he seemed to be preparing an unfamiliar secret ritual or initiation ceremony; rattling a box of matches, he began to light candles and with a politeness bordering on stiff formality offered me a comfortable-looking armchair — would I care to sit? — there was a hint of intrusiveness in these unnecessarily elaborate preparations, his scrupulous politeness notwithstanding, as though he were making it all too clear that he wanted the time we were about to spend together to be exceptionally pleasant and comfortable and with his movements was making me a virtual part of his little plan, as he threw off his jacket, loosened his tie, undid the top buttons of his shirt, and, looking thoughtfully around the room to see what else needed to be done, unself-consciously scratched his chest hair, enjoying himself as though I weren't even there; then he walked through the pretty arched doorway into the entrance hall and fiddled with something there, which mystified me even further, after which soft sounds of classical music swam into the room from concealed speakers, but I didn't want to yield to this fastidiously yet crudely staged atmosphere and chose to remain standing.

He came back to turn off the overhead light, and that surprised me — in fact, to be honest, since I took it as too hasty an allusion to something we were still anxious to hide, even from ourselves — frightened me, though by then candles were burning in sconces and candlesticks and we weren't in sudden darkness, at least thirty tall tapers making the room both churchlike and reminiscent of wartime blackouts, and he drew together the heavy red brocade curtain, its fleur-de-lis pattern glimmering gold in the candlelight, the rich ruffled fabric covering the entire height of the wall from floor to ceiling.

He enjoyed his movements, and because his limbs were long and slim— long arms, long fingers, long thighs in rather tight slacks — his movements were not ungainly; he touched objects with a sensual, even voluptuous pleasure, as if in coming into contact with them even these routine gestures caused him a kind of elemental joy, yet in making this subtle, over-subtle play for objects, suggesting cozy intimacy, he seemed to have me in mind as well, as if he had to prove something not only to himself but to me, trying to demonstrate — surely the game was not without purpose— how one could and should live pleasurably in this place, what rhythms were required by these surroundings, to show me in minute detail that this rhythm was as much his own as were the objects themselves; but for all the openness and genuine amiability his moves implied, I sensed a certain tense anxiety, and not only because the less-than-perfect ease of this shameless exhibitionism had a hint of obtrusive familiarity in it, but also because behind the exhibitionist's easy self-assurance, superior air, and secret delight, I couldn't help noticing a certain touchy tentativeness, as if he were watching me from the protected forward position of his superiority, trying to see whether I was really interested in the intimate tokens of trust he was offering me, whether he mightn't have made a mistake.

And because I felt this avid, persistent, selfish curiosity in every move he made, however harmonious and confident, however much offered as a revealing confession, his unspoken question was not unjustified, because I did act like someone who couldn't care less about his elaborate show, who'd rather remain within the reliable boundaries of conventional etiquette and did not even note the secret meaning of his gestures; I was so uninterested in him that I would have liked just to close my eyes so as not to see him open up like this and lay himself bare in hopes of a like response, but he, accurately gauging the nature and extent of my fears, was willing to neutralize the signals with other gestures — in short, was ready to retreat.

But by then we were too far gone, to say nothing of what had led up to this meeting, and an actual retreat was clearly out of the question, for my original mistake was to come up here in the first place and let him stand before me and smile his infinitely trustworthy smile, steady and untroubled, not begging for but offering trust and confidence, its fluttery surface made more sensitively responsive by hidden tentativeness, an all-pervasive smile; it was there in the vertical creases of his lips, in his eyes, but truly inside them somehow, on his smooth forehead, as a shadow in the corner of his mouth, and of course in the ingratiating dimples of his cheeks; so I could not close my eyes, if only because I felt acutely that if I were to do so, or even allow my lashes to droop the least little bit, I'd betray the feeling I'd harbored almost from the very first moment we met, and that would certainly contradict the stiffish posture, a result of my feigned indifference, with which I tried to hide, neutralize, force into the accepted moral order my unequivocal and rapturous attraction to his mouth, his eyes, his smile, the soft depth of his voice, his playfully buoyant walk — he walked as though he were flaunting it: Look, this is how I walk! he seemed to be saying — how was I to curb and discipline my senses, and thereby keep his movements, too, within bounds? no doubt it was foolish, absurd, to hope that in this situation, in this repellently rather than attractively interesting room, the coy game between sense and sensuality might be checked by some inner discipline; I tried desperately to steer my attention out of the trap of his smile to other things, to focus on the room, hoped to divert my attention by looking for other reference points and, by understanding the connection between them, perhaps I could rescue my mind, now very much at the mercy of my body; but meanwhile, I made the unpleasant discovery that my mouth and eyes had involuntarily borrowed his smile; I was smiling back at him with his own smile, his own eyes; I hadn't closed my eyes, yet I became one with him; minutes went by like this, and no matter what I did or tried to do, I was being carried in the direction he chose to steer us; and I knew that if I allowed this to continue and let his smile freeze on my lips, if I couldn't get it unstuck somehow, I'd soon lose what we call the right to self-determination — if only his all-too-knowing, accommodating, yet indecently high-handed determination hadn't bothered me so much! — my only means of escape would have been to find a clever excuse, say goodbye and get out of there, just leave, but then why was I so willing to come up in the first place? or maybe I should just walk out the door without saying a word? but there was no clever excuse for parting, simply couldn't have been, since we both took care to keep the smooth veneer of conventional social intercourse in this perfectly ordinary situation: two young men facing each other, after one of them had invited the other up for a drink; who could find anything objectionable in that? their mutual attraction, stronger than their bashfulness, was slightly embarrassing, but during the course of a serious conversation, when they'd let the power of their instincts manifest itself as abstract thought, the embarrassment would surely disappear, if only this smooth veneer weren't so transparent! as it was, attempts at distraction only enhanced the sense of intimacy, which I both welcomed and tried to avoid and which our mutual tactfulness — I wouldn't offend him and he wouldn't go too far — also strengthened, everything did, and in the end, however ill at ease I may have felt, all my eager concessions and self-deceptions, my glossing over things, my embarrassment, conspicuous stiffness, and forbearance simply boomeranged.

And on top of it all, he kept on talking, rapidly and more loudly than necessary, always following my eyes with his words; to the exclusion of all other possible topics, he held forth on whatever he thought my eyes were curious about; we might say more cynically that he was running off at the mouth, trying to relieve my embarrassment and at the same time keep my forced, trembling smile — his smile on my lips — from somehow reinfecting him; he went on jabbering, buzzing and flirting in a way that made his high-handed, obnoxious complacency unbearable and unacceptable precisely because it was so very masculine, or at least what's usually considered masculine: a mildly aggressive, enticing, instinctively obtrusive, ingratiating, audacious mirror image — what a caricature mirror image! — of the sort of behavior I had never had a chance to observe from the outside, for without giving it a thought, I had indulged in it myself; a disagreeable pose is what it was, a pose one masters sometime in adolescence, considering it very manly; the trick is to talk, talk a blue streak, without saying anything, so that only the form itself, the style, the razzle-dazzle of words can clue one in on the speaker's secret designs: I was surprised, wasn't I, he asked, that he'd painted the floor all white — but he wanted no reply, only to catch my eyes again with his and not let go— he knew, of course, that this sort of thing was usually not done, he said, but that had never stopped him before, and didn't I find it attractive, though? he did, when he'd finished painting it, and was pleased that he wouldn't have to scrub it anymore; the place used to look like a dump, a pigsty really, some old geezer had lived here before — he often tried to picture his old age and feared it, actually, considering that given his aberrant inclinations it would surely be the most critical period of his life, a horrid wreck of a body with still youthful urges lusting after young bodies — anyway, the neighbors told him the old man had died on a urine-soaked mattress in that little room where the sofa was now standing; he hoped fate wouldn't deal him such an old age; in fact, he didn't want any kind of old age; and I couldn't imagine the dreadful state of the apartment when he moved in, filthy beyond belief and so foul-smelling he had to keep the windows open even in winter, and it was still in the air, sometimes he could smell it even now, four years later; anyway, why shouldn't a floor be all white, who said it must always be brown or an ugly yellow? wasn't it a great idea to spread the color of pristine purity over all that smut? and wasn't this, after all, perfectly in tune with the taste of our upright Germans, and he was, if not fully, at least half German.

Only half? I asked, surprised.

That's a long and quite amusing story, he said with a laugh and, as if sweeping an unexpected obstacle easily aside, went right on, with the same fervor, asking me if I had had the chance to make these or similar kinds of observations, because if I hadn't yet, I would surely discover in the future that white could be the appropriate symbol for the defeated German people's national character.

I said it was mostly gray I'd been noticing, and because I felt I should somehow be embarrassed for him, for his flippant tone, my gaze drifted away.

But he followed my eyes: ah, the desk, a nice piece, wasn't it? and the armchairs, candelabra, and rugs, too, all brought over from his mother's, just about everything was from there, a kind of family inheritance, all of it, he looted his mother's place, but she didn't mind, mothers never do, and all this was recent; at first he wanted the place to be white and bare, just a bed covered with a white sheet, nothing else… he was blathering away, giving me all this nonsense because he was glad I was there but afraid to say so; shouldn't we rather drink something, he happened to have a bottle of French champagne, chilled, saving it for some special occasion, one never knew when such an occasion might arise, right? how about making our meeting a special occasion and uncorking the bottle?

Taking my bemused silence for acquiescence, he left to get the champagne; the antique clock on the wall struck twelve, I counted the strokes, mechanically, helplessly; So 'tis midnight, I thought, which wasn't too bright but characteristic of my state, for by then my thinking had simply shut down so that pure sensory perception could take control, making me appear as another object in the room without my knowing how it got there, a not unfamiliar sensation, yet never before had I sensed so vividly and thoroughly that the place I was in was as unique as the hour marked by the countable strokes of the clock, because something had to happen here, something that went against all my wishes and that would change the course of my life, and whatever it might turn out to be, I knew I had to yield to it: midnight, the witching hour, never more propitious, I had to laugh at myself, as though I'd never let myself go before, a slight exaggeration, surely, as if I were a young girl debating whether to lose or keep her virginity, as if this room were the last station on a long deferment whose nature and content had been unfamiliar until now; I was fooling myself, still pretending — what pleasure to pretend to ourselves! — that I really had no idea what extraordinary thing might happen or perhaps already had happened here tonight, but what was it?

The candles flickered and crackled, soothingly, beautifully; outside it was pouring, and after the clock struck twelve all one could hear was the even, bubbling rhythm of baroque music and the pelting, pattering sound of the rain, as if somebody had overdirected this scene to be so obviously, so ludicrously beautiful.

Because somebody did stage it, I was sure, not he or I but somebody, or at least it got staged beforehand, as all accidental encounters are; no one plans them or counts on them, and only later, in retrospect, do we realize they were pivotal, fateful; at first it all seems banal, incidental, incoherent, random fragments and flashes to which we needn't attach much significance, and as a rule we don't, for what may be accidentally visible to us from a tangled heap of occurrences, what may hang out and appear as a sign, a warning, is nothing more than some detail belonging to another cluster of happenings we have nothing to do with; a prop in Thea's slightly laughable romantic agony, that's what I thought of him then, because he was the one she spoke to Frau Kühnert about on that dark autumn afternoon in the uncomfortable silence of the rehearsal hall, calling him "the boy," an odd and deliberately derisive appellation, enough to arouse my curiosity; but then it had been more intriguing to try to follow the inner process, the various degrees of transition, that Thea had to follow so that finally she could focus the intense emotions of her just completed scene on some external object, which she ended up calling the boy; as I have already pointed out, Thea, like all great actors, had the special ability to make her inner processes, mixed in with her private life, continually visible and spectacular and, precisely because emotions displayed on the stage are nourished by the actor's so-called private life, one could never be sure when she was in earnest and when she was only playing with something that might mean a great deal to her; in other words, unlike normal mortals, she would toy with deadly serious things and take seriously what was only make-believe, and this interested me more than the seemingly irrelevant question of who the elusive person was whom she labeled "the boy," the person she disdained, hated even, so much so that she wouldn't utter his name, the person she nevertheless didn't dare telephone because for reasons unknown to me, he had asked her never to call him again, for whose closeness, then, right after the erotic desire expressed onstage had become impersonal and objectless, she still yearned so much that she was willing to risk humiliation, and in whose room I would be standing later that same evening — in a sense as her replacement.

In spite of my apprehensions, and they were numerous enough, I had given in to her pleading and nagging and agreed to spend the evening with them: "Come on, don't be such a meanie! why can't you come with us, why play hard to get when I so very much want you to come? oh, you boys drive me mad! you'll get to meet him, at least, he's a remarkable character, and you don't even have to be jealous of him, he's not quite as remarkable as you are, Sieglinde, do me a favor, you ask, too! my asking isn't enough? it's me, me who is asking you, isn't that enough?" she was purring, whispering, playing the girlishly awkward seductress, leaning her light, fragile body against mine and taking hold of my arm; it would have been pretty hard to resist such a playful display of affection, yet what compelled me to go was not curiosity, let alone jealousy — the prospect of observing the two of them in a probably perverse relationship didn't intrigue me either — but because from the moment Thea had managed to avert her lustful and horror-filled gaze from Hübchen's half-naked body and, turning toward us, caught my stare, the almost voyeuristic stare of an overstimulated spectator, I too had been deeply, personally touched by her emotional upheaval, playing itself out in the very sensitive border region of her professional and personal candor: it was impossible to decide whether the scene, interrupted by inveterate directorial rudeness just as it was reaching its climax, might not perhaps continue between the two of us, because to bring it to a halt was impossible, about that there could be no doubt.

Yet ours was a very cool-headed game that no single glance, errant or uncontrolled, was going to derail from its consciously, intelligently charted course; a glance like that could only add spice, introduce another hairpin turn of emotions to make more daring and fiery what was and would continue to be essentially cold, as though haughtily, arrogantly enamored of our intellectual superiority, we had said to each other, No, no! we won't do it! we can easily withstand even these impulsive, involuntary looks, and we won't fall on each other like a couple of animals! we'll stick to the warmest mutual interest, which pays attention to the details of every detail and remains, therefore, in the realm of activities of the conscious mind — unnaturally and anti-lifelike, no matter that it can expose the rawest of instincts — precisely because the interest is so intense that the natural ability to let go, the vulnerability necessary for normal human contact, cannot be realized even for a moment: not so unusual a phenomenon, for we need only think of lovers who, reaching the peak of their mutual attraction with its promise of annihilating fulfillment, cannot achieve physical union until they fall back from that rarefied sphere of inspirited love to a more earthly closeness, until their bodies' pain shrinks the spirit of love to a humiliatingly manageable size; then, in the throes of excruciating pain, they can make their way not to ultimate bliss but to the liberating pleasure of momentary, flashlike gratification, arriving not where they had originally headed but where their bodies will allow them to go.

We were standing under the cheerless neon light of the narrow, characteristically ill-smelling corridor between the rehearsal hall and the dressing rooms, storerooms, showers, and toilets; it was here, in the pungent smell of gluey stage sets, paints, powders, and colognes, sweat-stained costumes and human bodies, permanently clogged drains, worn-out slippers and shoes, melting soaps and damp, used towels, that we first touched; I'd never seen her face so close, and it was as though I was looking not at the face of a woman but at some special, cozy, and familiar landscape whose every byway and hiding place I knew, every furrow and shadow, every memory and the meaning of every movement; looking at this landscape stripped me bare, down to my childhood; Frau Kühnert was still standing there, holding the receiver of the pay phone, distant and offended, but also smugly dutiful: "You see, your requests can be so humiliating sometimes, but there's nothing I wouldn't do for you," for she'd just finished giving us a supposedly objective report of her conversation with Melchior, and "What did I tell you? face it: I'm irresistible!" Thea cried triumphantly, whereupon Frau Kühnert, with a smile of success but still angry, slammed down the phone; Thea was being outrageous, of course, though no more so than usual, hogging every speck of the success, playful to be sure, quite aware of her own weaknesses, but still! Frau Kühnert's resentment wasn't unwarranted, since the kind of conversation she'd just concluded is never easy — convincing someone to do something he has little inclination to do — yet it was fairly obvious that Melchior's accepting the invitation had nothing to do with Thea's being irresistible but that the ruse had worked, the trap had been well set: what Melchior had accepted was not the invitation but the intermediary, Frau Kühnert, whom he hardly knew and did not want to offend; or, more precisely, since he did not yet suspect that Thea had no compunction about gossiping freely about everything — as if being totally open were the price of guarding the really important secrets of her life — and did not wish to publicize the rather cruel way he had been forced to respond to her impulsive and, as I was to learn later, morally dubious onslaughts, he had no desire to let Frau Kühnert in on secrets that, as it turned out, were no secrets to her; Frau Kühnert's reproachful look and offended tone came not so much because of the unpleasant nature of her conversation, not even the quietly vindictive manner in which Melchior had given Thea to understand that her disagreeably persistent efforts were to no avail, that he remained in control of the situation and that he'd come all right, come gladly, but would like to bring along a friend of his from France who happened to be staying with him, to which Frau Kühnert couldn't very well say no, don't bring him, but instead had to assure him effusively that any friend of his would be more than welcome; what really triggered Frau Kühnert's resentment and anger — yet another surprising and unaccountable turnabout — was the very gentle manner in which Thea turned to me during our conversation, clinging to my arm, purring and flirting, to which I responded, naturally enough, with an awkward grin, for what was she doing grabbing and pawing me when she was really after the other one? or did she now want me instead, repeating her earlier double take, when she'd responded to my unashamed glance after she'd had her feel of Hübchen's unashamed body? or did she want both of us at the same time? bring us together just to play us off against each other? prove that she wasn't interested in Melchior, could twist everyone around her finger, anyone, and thus overcome the humiliation she'd suffered from Melchior's rude rebuff, a hurt she felt like a reopened wound during her scene with Hübchen? because she did yearn for youth and beauty, oh yes, and the wound began to bleed even more when she got into that hopeless argument with the director; in any case, the display of what seemed like tenderness, mutual interest, and trust, the picture of us standing there, clinging, our eyes locked, while life went on around us — props and flats were being carried past, somebody flushed the toilet, and then Hübchen marched out of the shower, naked, and headed for his dressing room, but along the way winked at Thea as if to say, rather insolently, "See, you miserable slut, you'll get from this one what you wanted from me just a while ago" — must have really unnerved Frau Kühnert, who did not comprehend the message, or the meaning of our intense look; what's more, Thea didn't even bother to thank her for having been the go-between, couldn't, really, since she was too busy paying attention to me and of course took it for granted that Frau Kühnert was there to serve her.

It soon became clear that Thea only appeared to be paying attention to me — just as I appeared to be listening only to her — which made me feel as good as if it were real and complete, which flattered me; her body was light and delicate and I felt, not for the first time, that I'd like to press it into myself though I knew that it was the kind of body that mustn't be held too hard, its melting softness with its touch of firmness yielded only if we ourselves remained soft and gentle, if we managed somehow to refine and attenuate our own forcefulness; yet she did sweep me off my feet, as they say, and while giving her proof of my rapt, almost obsequious attention, I was really bent on finding out how she did what she did, how she could produce this perfectly exquisite play of appearances, these irretrievably effective situations, and at the same time always remain outside them; where was she, I wondered, when she had no more gestures under her control; then again, I too was only appearing to be as respectfully, almost lovingly attentive as Frau Kühnert thought I was: but this whole business, which in the end turned into a deadly serious game of pretenses, began at the moment when, about six weeks before this little scene in the corridor, Langerhans first led me to the small director's table and sat me down next to Frau Kühnert in his own empty chair — which he never used because during rehearsals he would pace up and down, scratch his chin, whip off his glasses, then push them back on again, as though he weren't even there and was doing something other than what in fact he was doing — at any rate, from that moment on I had been in a state of continuous excitement.

But exactly how and when she showed up at that table I cannot remember, for as soon as I took my place, a place that as time went on I found more and more unpleasant, she was already there — or could she have been there before and I just hadn't noticed?

It's possible she was there from the beginning, or maybe she came over later; either way, I had the feeling from the start that she was there because of me, and this apparent oversight or lapse of memory is but further proof that the mechanics of emotions, about which we are so curious in this novel, are obscured by the very emotions operating in us, so that we can never say anything meaningful about it; it's almost as if every occurrence were obstructed by our own sharply focused attention; consequently, in retrospect, we recall not what happened but the way we observed what happened, what emotional response we had to the event, which itself became hazy and fragmentary under our observation; we do not perceive a happening as a happening, a change as a change, a turning point as a turning point, even though we expect life to keep producing changes and dramatic reversals, for in each change and reversal, however tragic, we expect redemption itself, the uplifting sensation of "This is what I've been waiting for," yet just as attention obstructs the event, change is obstructed by anticipation, and thus the really momentous changes in our lives occur unnoticed, in the most complete silence, and we become suspicious only when a new state of affairs has already got the better of us, making impossible any return to the disdained, abhorred, but ever so secure and familiar past.

I simply didn't notice that from the moment Thea appeared I wasn't the same person I had been before.

As I say, she was standing there next to the raised platform, leaning her elbow on the table, as if I weren't even present, continuing an earlier conversation that for some reason had been cut short; as I looked at the face I knew from photographs and movies, a scene suddenly flashed through my mind: lifting the covers, she climbs into somebody's bed, her small breasts swinging forward as she does — true, she was ten years younger then, but now her looks were completely unfamiliar, like seeing the face of someone very close to us, a lover or our mother, for the first time; what I sensed was a combination of intimate familiarity and complete unfamiliarity, natural curiosity and natural reserve, feelings so strong and contradictory that I couldn't but yield to them all, at the same time pretending to have yielded to none of them, and from that moment on I paid attention only to her and nothing else, even keeping her smell in my nose, while pretending to pay attention to everything but her; oddly, she too acted in very much this same way, though for different reasons that became clear to me only much later, pretending not to notice that my face was but a few inches from hers, that she felt the heat radiating from my face, that it was really me she was talking to; of course she went on talking to Frau Kühnert, nonchalantly continuing their earlier conversation, but shaping her words, modulating her intonation so that I, having dropped into the middle of the story, would find her telling of it interesting precisely because of its bewildering incomprehensibility.

It seemed she had received some frozen shrimp from the other side, from across the Wall, from the western half of the city — this odd, convoluted reference, uttered in the rehearsal hall noisy with preparations for the day's work, made her announcement sound unreal, like a line from a fairy tale or cheap thriller, forcing one to imagine that as soon as one stepped out the door, one would bump into the wall, The Wall, about which we rarely spoke, and behind which were tank traps, coiled barbed wire, and treacherously concealed mines which a single careless step could set off, and beyond the sealed strip of no-man's-land lay the city, the other city, a fantasy city, a ghost town, for as far as we were concerned it didn't really exist; and yet the little packet of frozen shrimp did make it across a border guarded by machine-gun-toting soldiers and bloodhounds trained to kill; actually, they were brought over by a friend, I didn't catch his name but gathered he was a pretty important person over on the other side, and a great admirer of hers; when she cut open the package and emptied its contents on a plate, the shrimp looked to her like pink caterpillars which, just as the poor critters were about to spin their cocoon, a terrible ice age had descended on; she had seen shrimp before, but for some reason — she didn't know why — she now found them disgusting, they turned her stomach, she thought she was going to throw up, what was she going to do with them anyway? and wasn't it disgusting that we gobbled up everything? wouldn't it be nicer if one was, say, a hippo and ate only crisp, tasty grass? but those taste buds on our tongues were filled with mean little cravings, they wanted to taste sharp things and sour things, sweet and tart things, they were ready to burst, these buds, that's how hungry they were, they hungered for tastes that didn't even exist— she was babbling on, unstoppable; what was really indecent in her view was not people fucking in public but people openly stuffing their faces, and she finally decided, even though she still felt nauseous, to proceed as she usually did before cooking, as Frau Kühnert well knew, laying out all the ingredients on the kitchen table, nice and neat, because this way she could actually see the additional flavors alongside each other, could savor all of them with her eyes as well as her tongue, that's what's called stimulating the palate; to her, cooking was also playing, improvising, and the show must go on, not even a good puke could stop it; anyway, she decided to whip up some potatoes first, but not just some ordinary mashed potatoes, mind you, she enlivened the boring taste of spuds, milk, and butter with grated cheese and sour cream, then spread the hot puree on a big plate, scooped out the middle with a spoon, and filled it with the shrimp she had first sautéed in herb butter, and that's how she served it, with a side dish of boiled carrots seasoned with Jamaica peppers and a bottle of dry white wine, and it was heavenly! simple yet heavenly! ordinary yet quite, quite elegant, "like me!"

As she craned her long neck, revealing well-conditioned yet delicate, skinny, and strangely underdeveloped muscles, almost like a child's, as she thrust her head seductively forward, hunching up her narrow, bony shoulders, arching her body like a cat poised to jump, looking long and steadily into everyone's eyes as if challenging them to be part of a play whose stage would be the face itself, its fluid features and the eyes, and whose director, of course, would be she herself, as she did all this, she displayed plenty of studied coyness, no doubt, but not the usual kind; in this game she did not want to be beautiful and attractive, as other people might, in fact she wanted to look uglier than they were and it was as if she had deliberately made herself look unattractive, or rather, as if her body had a different view of beauty, refuting as false and craven the generally accepted notion that a human body or face can be beautiful and not simply a functionally arranged system of bones, flesh, skin, and various gelatinous substances that have nothing to do with the concept of beauty; and for this reason, although she was preoccupied more with herself than with anyone else, she made no attempt to look beautiful, and her purpose seemed to be to laugh at, to ridicule her own longing for beauty and perfection; with a slight exaggeration we might say she loved making a fool of herself; with her ugliness she annoyed, provoked, and challenged her surroundings, like a mischievous child calling attention to itself by being mean and difficult, though all it wants is to be petted and cuddled; Thea's hair stuck sloppily to her well-formed, almost perfectly round head; she herself cropped it very short, "so it shouldn't sweat under the wigs," she said, and without a single remark from me, she would plunge into endless monologues justifying her peculiar hairstyle: in her opinion there are two kinds of perspiration — plain physical sweating, of course, when the body for some reason can't adjust to the surrounding temperature because it is tired, worn-out, overfed, or run-down, and then the far more common, psychic perspiration, the sweating of the soul that occurs when we don't listen to what our body is telling us, when we pretend not to understand its language, when we lie and dissemble, when we are weak, clumsy, greedy, hesitant, and stupid, when, defying our body, we insist on doing something only because it's the proper thing to do — it's the clash of wills that produces the heat, and that's when we say we are soaked in sweat; as for her, if there was anything she wanted, it was to stay free, and therefore she wanted to know whether it was her soul that was sweating, she didn't want to blame it on wigs and heavy costumes, even if what she was secreting was the filth and grime of her soul; of course, all this didn't explain why she dyed her hair, now red, now black, using a do-it-yourself kit, and why at other times she neglected it completely, letting it grow and revealing that if she hadn't been touching it up it would be almost completely gray, but then again, what she had wasn't like real hair but instead a thin, frazzled fuzz with no body, probably no particular color to begin with, neither blond nor brown, a slight fluff on a fledgling's head; about the only thing that lent character to her face was her prominent cheekbones, otherwise her features were rather nondescript, her face was dull: a not very high or broad forehead, a somewhat misshapen pug nose whose tip stuck up too much, staring into the world with two disproportionately fleshy nostrils; the lips were wide and sensuous, but they did not blend smoothly into her face and seemed almost as if lifted from another face and placed in hers by accident; oh, but the voice that issued from those lips, from behind the nicotine-stained teeth! a deep, raspy, fully resonant voice or, if she wished, soft and caressing, or hysterically, piercingly thin, as if its tenderness resided in its roughness, the possibility of a howl lurking in every whisper, while her real howls were full of hateful hisses and whispers, each sound implying its opposite, an impression that her face as a whole also gave: on the one hand, her plain features made her look like a worn-out, emotionally unfulfilled working woman whose many frustrations rendered her dreary and uninteresting, and in this respect it was not very different from the faces one saw during morning and evening rush hours on subways and commuter trains, faces sunk in the quiet stupor of fatigue and uselessness; on the other hand, her skin, with its naturally brown coloring, was like a false front, a mask, with a pair of huge, very warm, intelligent, and darkly glittering brown eyes accentuated by very thin lashes; one had the feeling that these eyes belonged not to this mask but to the real face under the mask, and they did glitter, this is no exaggeration; looking for an acceptable explanation, I thought that perhaps her eyeballs were much larger than one would expect in such a relatively small face, or that they were more rounded, more convex than the average eyeball, and that was quite probable, since one did not cease to be aware of their largeness even when she closed her eyes; smooth, heavy, arched lids slid over her eyes, and the mask, full of wrinkles, turned into a kind of antique map of a lively face growing old; on her forehead the furrows ran in dense horizontal lines, but if she suddenly raised her eyebrows, two vertical lines shot up, beginning at the inner tip of the brows, and cut across the horizontal ones, making it appear as though two diaphanous butterfly wings were fluttering on her forehead; only in the hollows of her temples and on her chin did the skin remain smooth, and even on her nose there was not so much a wrinkle as a soft-rimmed indentation that followed the line of her nasal bone; when she pursed her lips, these dips and grooves prefigured the old woman in her; when she laughed, crow's-feet radiated outward from the corners of her eyes; and if in her youth her skin had been overstretched by her protruding cheekbones, the virginal tightness now seemed to be taking revenge on cheeks that were a veritable parade ground of wrinkles, and to know these wrinkles required close and patient scrutiny, because this was not a confusion of lines but a profusion of details so rich it could not be absorbed with a single look.

"We'll wait for you to change, okay," I said quietly, "and then we can still talk about tonight, but hurry up."

She was still looking at me: the wrinkles of her smile, the furrows around her eyes, the closely meshed curved lines that seemed to relieve the darker, deeper grooves of bitterness and suffering around her mouth were still meant for me, but as she withdrew her arm from mine, slowly, making sure the transition was appropriately considerate, therefore beautiful, a flicker in her eyes already indicated that she wouldn't have time to reward my graciousness; as soon as she got what she wanted she no longer felt she needed to pay attention to it, she was already gone; and though she did want to hurry, it wasn't because I had asked her to, or because she had to change, but because there was something else she had to do.

"I hope you don't mind, but I won't be going with you, count me out this time," Frau Kühnert said, and not even her exemplary self-discipline could hide the hurt and reproach in her voice; by this time Thea had torn herself away from me and was running down the long corridor, only to disappear in Hübchen's dressing room, but she yelled back, "I've no time for you now!"

Frau Kühnert, as if she had just heard a terribly funny joke, burst into an openmouthed laugh, what else could she do? there is a level of rudeness and insolence to which we cannot respond with hurt or indignation, because we sense that it is the manifestation of the most profound affection and, canceling out our other intentions, actually makes us happy; she stepped closer to me, and as if searching for her friend's just vanished presence, she seized my arm impulsively, unthinkingly; as soon as she became conscious of it, her ringing laugh collapsed into an embarrassed grin, and the grin, without the tact or subtlety of a smooth transition, hardened into a groundless gloom.

When I was looking not at Thea's face but at anyone else's, I found every face, including my own, coarse and vulgar, their expressions hopelessly awkward, conveying feelings crudely and obviously; at this moment, for instance, I would have loved to withdraw my arm from Frau Kühnert's hand, and she would have liked to retract her sudden gesture, but we remained in the void left behind by Thea — and didn't know what to do with it. In her confusion, clearly heightened by my own reluctant response, Frau Kühnert addressed me with a crude and verbose openness that was not only unwarranted but embarrassed us so much as almost to unite us, though it was a union neither of us desired.

"Please don't go with her," she said, or rather shouted, squeezing my arm, "I'm asking you not to interfere in this."

"In what?" I asked with a silly grin.

"You don't know this place well enough, and it's just as well, you don't have to know it, but I get the feeling sometimes, and please don't take this personally, I get the feeling that you don't always understand what we're saying, and that's why you might think she was, I don't know, crazy, but please understand that this can't be explained, because it's madness, believe me, the whole thing is madness! I always try to hold her back, I do what I can, but sometimes I must also give in to her, otherwise she couldn't go on playing the whore, because that's what it's all about, don't you see? if she couldn't do it, she would really go crazy, so please, I beg of you, don't take advantage of your position; if not you, it would be somebody else, she'd be doing it for somebody else, can't you hear them in there?"

We could indeed hear wild noises from Hübchen's dressing room, his screams and Thea's shrieks, objects falling over and crashing, skittish giggles, ripples of slightly forced laughter; then the door slammed shut, and for a moment it seemed the little room discreetly hushed up the sound of their secret doings, but then it flew open again; although I understood perfectly well what Frau Kühnert was talking about, the role she offered me suited me fine; after all, is there any event that can't be understood even better, any detail that doesn't contain potentially more significant, further details? if I went on playing the fool, I might just stumble on new details, discover hitherto unfamiliar connections — or so I hoped.

"I'm very sorry, but I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," I said, stretching my innocent grin to idiotic proportions and pretending to be a little indignant — offended, too, of course; the strategy worked, because my befuddlement, which always flatters my interlocutors, pushed her in the direction she had meant to go anyway; she felt she could speak freely now, since she was talking to an idiot, and, moreover, she could also release all the anger and frustration that had built up during that telephone conversation: "You don't understand, you just don't understand," she whispered impatiently, her sidelong glances taking in the bustle around us, "that's exactly what I mean, you couldn't possibly understand, and you shouldn't, because I don't want you to, because it's private, but if you really want to know, she is passionately, desperately in love — do you know what that is? have you ever been? — well, she's desperately in love, no, she thinks she is, she's made herself believe she's desperately in love with that boy" — she jerked her head angrily in the direction of the telephone—"and it's not enough that he's twenty years younger, he's even gay, yet she got it into her head that she'll seduce him, because she never loved anyone so much, not like this, I mean she could go to bed with the idiot in that room, with anyone, with you, but she wants him, don't you see? wants him because she can't have him, so there, now you can understand, and I'd really like you to leave right now, please don't be offended, just leave, because then maybe I can still hold her back, I can't bear to see her being humiliated, I just can't, can you understand?"

There was something false in this outburst, for she obviously enjoyed letting me in on something she should have kept and even wanted to keep quiet about, yet her passion was so deep-felt, so genuine, I couldn't ignore it; her abnormally large eyes were bulging at me from behind her glasses, which slid halfway down her nose: the upper rim of her glasses seemed to be cutting in half the watery-blue bloodshot eyes, and the lower half of the eyeballs became frightfully magnified and distorted under the thick lenses; this was the passion of goodness, love, and concern, expressed openly and unambiguously, not to be shaken even by the realization that the expression of goodness also needed a measure of falseness. Frau Kühnert needed, and wanted, to enjoy the knowledge that she was the only one of Thea's friends who was not patently selfish and greedy, who was not prompted by ignoble motives, who accepted her unconditionally for what she was, who truly understood her, and the total understanding of another person, an initiation into her secrets, was, after all, the only real satisfaction one could and should receive in return for selfless giving and attention; her hand, which a moment ago was holding me fast, was now steering me, pushing me forward, and I obediently started walking toward the exit, but at the same moment the two of them were suddenly in the corridor again, flushed and out of breath, still caught up in their pleasurable roughhousing, still panting; with his hand on his crotch, Hübchen was trying to back away while Thea, with a wet towel in her hand, assumed a fencer's posture, and lashing out with the towel, she pursued the little idiot — as they called him among themselves — letting the towel sting whenever it hit his naked body; but when she sensed, like a flash seen only from the corner of her eye, in which direction I was headed, she produced one of her most extraordinary transitions, dropped the towel, and yelled after me, "Where do you think you're going?" and letting her victim get away, she dashed after me.

But what she had intended as a final, victorious assault turned into a quiet farewell.

By the time we got to her car for the short ride to the opera house, to catch the new production of Fidelio, it was a subdued Thea who was with us; she rummaged around in the dark for a long time until she finally found in the glove compartment the glasses she needed for driving, and what a sight they were! greasy, dusty, the lenses uncleaned for ages, with one of the sidepieces missing so she had to stretch her slender neck even more, watching every move of her head, carefully balancing the spectacles lest they slide down her nose; it was late evening, the streets were empty, a strong wind was blowing, and in the halos ringing the streetlamps you could see the rain coming down at a slant; none of us was talking; from the back seat where I sat, somewhat discomfited by this silence, I kept watching her.

Now she seemed to be playing no role; it was a rare moment, a welcome intermission, though possibly it was Frau Kühnert's confidential disclosure that made me see her like this, serious, self-absorbed; she was probably dead tired, too, and seemed vaguely distracted, her limbs automatically going through the motions needed to drive, she was paying so little attention that when she was about to turn from the almost completely dark Friedrichstrasse to the better-lit Unter den Linden, she stopped, as she was supposed to, and signaled; the little red light on the dashboard began to flash, but as if an endless stream of cars had filled the avenue and she couldn't cut in, we just sat there waiting as the red light kept flashing and clicking in the dark, fresh gusts of wind whipped the rain against the car door, the wipers squeaked and ticked as they flattened the water running down the windshield; if Frau Kühnert hadn't said, "Maybe we can go now," we might have spent even more time at that intersection.

"Oh yes," she said quietly, more to herself than to us, and then made the turn.

Those few moments, seemingly very long yet also too brief, that dead time before we turned, meant a great deal to me; I had been waiting for it without knowing it, hoping it would come without knowing that I was hoping for such an ordinary moment, a moment of letting go, of imposing no control, and I myself was too tired and too upset to track this moment consciously or even think about it; it was the case of raw and pure senses perceiving raw and pure senses, even though I had only a side view of her face, and her profile, especially with those sorry-looking glasses, wasn't so memorable; still, it seemed that the streetlights reflecting off the wet pavement altered that face or, rather, changed it back to its original form, in part highlighting its surfaces and in part wiping away the fineness of its wrinkles: this was the face I'd been looking for in her, the face I'd seen before but only in flashes because of its mobility; the face in its entirety had always eluded me; the face I now saw was the face behind the mask, the one that belonged to her eyes; this face was even older and uglier, because it had more shadows, and in the color of the streetlights and because of its own inner immobility, it was a dead face, yet the face of a little girl, unformed and taut, whom I had known within myself and loved tenderly for a long time, a beautiful little girl who kept trying out her charms on me; but it wasn't a face out of my childhood or adolescence, even if the moment and the late-autumn downpour did evoke memories and fill me with nostalgia; this little girl was akin to all the little girls I had ever known, yet in her unfamiliarity resembled me more than people I had actually known and only seldom thought of.

This was probably the reason I had been watching Thea for weeks with such reluctance, as well as with a fascinated revulsion, and all the while inexplicably identifying with her, as if without a mirror I could watch myself in her face, and most likely that is why our relationship, for all our eager interest in each other, remained calm and controlled, making us recoil from even the possibility of physical contact — one can never be directly in touch with one's mirror image, however flattering and intimate it is; self-love can be consummated only through indirect means, via secret paths — but at the moment, which I remember more vividly than many subsequent, far more intimate encounters, a seemingly out-of-place image flashed through my mind, blotting out the real image before me: of a little girl, Thea, standing in front of a mirror, serious and deeply studying the features of her face, playing with them, distorting them, not simply clowning but listening to some inner sensation, trying to see what effect her facial tricks would have on her; this was not an actual memory but a fantasy working in visual images that came to my aid; I simply imagined her, and who can say why I had to imagine this particular situation, in which this little girl, opening up the peculiar gap between her inner perception of herself and her own face, struggled really to see herself in the mirror, see herself as somebody else might, anybody, nobody in particular.

What I may have spotted in her then, and I say this now in retrospect, was the creature, or that layer of her personality, on which she built her pretenses, her clowning and hamming, her chameleonlike transformations, her lies as well as her unceasing, ruthless, and self-destructive struggle against them; this was her only secure ground, the nourishing soil to which she could return when tired, insecure, and desperate, the ultimate home front from which she ventured forth with her games and pretenses, a place so safe she could freely abandon it; for her, then, the short ride between the two theaters was but a brief retreat to this hinterland, so that stepping into the lobby of the opera house she could appear before Melchior with her face and body fully restored, offering him her utmost, her true beauty, the picture of her reconstructed self; and her becoming so beautiful again revealed something about the secret roads she had to travel so that onstage she could at will assume and cast off the most wideranging human characteristics.

Perhaps it was not a little girl or boy whom I saw in my imagination but a sexless child who had no doubts or misgivings yet, because it couldn't conceive of not being loved and therefore turned to us with such confidence, such faith — this was the child in Thea whom Frau Kühnert loved, whose mother she was — that one could not help reciprocating, if only to the extent of an involuntary smile — and that's how she appeared in the theater lobby, light, beautiful, slender, a bit like a child, ready to meet Melchior, who was standing on top of the staircase with his French friend, towering over the noisy throng of theatergoers; and if Melchior's face still showed a touch of displeasure at the moment when he noticed us, by the time he was hurrying down the stairs toward Thea he began to bask, almost in spite of himself, in the glow of the smile he was receiving from her, with no hint of the mocking cruelty with which Thea had prepared herself for this meeting, no trace of the raw lust with which she had pointed the tip of her sword at Hübchen's naked chest, or of the dread with which she had sought fulfillment in my eyes afterward; likewise, there was nothing to suggest that Melchior was just another "boy" for her, like Hübchen, for instance, with whom she could romp to her heart's content; Melchior was a proper young man, calm, handsome, well-adjusted, unconnected with the theater, a civilian with no inkling of the raging passions she regularly left behind in the rehearsal hall; a very likable young man, jovial, always ready to smile, his bearing straight to the point almost of stiffness, which may have been the result of good breeding or self-discipline; and in the moment the two were approaching each other, it also became clear that we, witnesses to this meeting, simply did not exist.

They embraced; Thea reached only to his shoulders and her thin body almost disappeared in his arms.

Then Melchior gently pushed her away, but didn't let go.

"You look beautiful tonight," he said softly, and laughed.

The voice was deep, warm, ingratiating.

"Beautiful? Dead tired is more like it," Thea answered, looking at him with her head tilted sideways, coquettishly, "I just wanted to see you for a moment."

And after a few weeks had passed, perhaps as much as a month, during which every hour spent alone seemed like a waste of time, we decided to part, we felt we had to; we had to break out of our furtive closeness and go somewhere, anywhere; and if we couldn't part, as we couldn't, we thought we should at least stop spending all our time together here, like this, disdaining and neglecting our obligations and most of the time sitting in this room, under the eaves, a room whose very sight my eyes had a hard time getting used to, because it was at once dreary and stifling; in the candlelight it often struck me as the drawing room of a fancy bordello or some secret sanctuary, the two not being so different; it exuded a cold sensuousness, a curious enough combination of qualities to make one feel ill at ease; it became a more ordinary, livable room only when the sun shone through the filthy windows, showing the fine dust settled on the furniture, on picture frames and inside the folds of the curtains, the fuzz-balls gathered in the corners; the weak autumn light that seemed, because of the flying motes, to be hovering brought with it that austerely beautiful outside world of gray, grim, moldering walls, roofs, and back yards from which Melchior had tried to isolate himself with his softness, his silks and richly patterned rugs and heavy brocades, and to which, by his very attempt to escape it, he remained connected; ultimately, it didn't much matter where we were, we happened to be here and couldn't really go anywhere else, and who cared about the nuances of our differing tastes or about so-called cleanliness? we certainly didn't, if only because this room was the only place that guaranteed privacy, hiding and protecting us; sometimes even going to the kitchen to fix a bite to eat seemed like a big and bothersome undertaking; he had an obsession about always keeping the kitchen window open, and I failed to convince him that odors become stronger in the cold air — he hated kitchen smells and therefore the kitchen window had to be kept open — so we'd sit in the warm room, facing each other; in the morning he made a fire in the white tile stove, I sat in the same armchair he'd offered me the first night I visited him, which became my permanent seat, we sat looking at each other, I liked looking at his hands mostly, the white half-moons of his slender, steeply arched fingernails — I'd scrape their reticulated, hard surface with my own, less tidy, flatter nails; I also liked to look at his eyes, his forehead, his eyebrows, we held each other's hand, and at his thighs, the swell between his legs, his feet tucked in his slippers; our knees touched, we talked, and if I turned my head I could see a slender poplar tree: in the back yard ringed by roofs and bare walls a single poplar tree grew so tall it reached all the way up here to the sixth floor and shot up past the roof, into the clear autumn sky; it was shedding its leaves now, becoming more and more bare every day.

We talked, as I say, though it would be more correct to say that we told each other stories, and even that would not be an accurate description of the feverish urging to relate and the eager curiosity to listen to each other's words with which we tried to complement the contact of our bodies, our constant physical presence in each other, with signs beyond the physical, with the music of spoken sound, with intelligible words, and at the same time to use words to envelop, to obscure the physical relationship; we soliloquized, we gabbed, we inundated each other with words, and inasmuch as speech has a sensual, physical significance in the words' relationship to one another, in tones and rhythms independent of meaning, we used it to enhance our physical closeness, knowing well that words could only allude to the mind, to what's beyond the body, for words may be genuine but they can never tell the full story; we kept gabbing away — interminably, insatiably, in the hope that with our chaotic stories we would draw each other into the story of our own bodies and share that story with each other the way we shared our bodies, and at the same time we seemed to be using the same stories to defend ourselves, to fight our mutual helplessness and interdependence, aware of that ridiculous past tense in which we each had our own history, when we were independent of each other, when we were free! yet with unerring good sense, we didn't make all that much of these stories, not for lack of attentiveness but because we never wanted to tell each other just something but always everything, everything in every moment — an impossible, laughable undertaking — and as a result we got completely lost in each other's stories; the truth is, I have no idea what we could have talked about at such length, I'd be hard put to cite specific sentences, even if now, recalling our entire episode, I can safely say there's nothing about him I don't know, nothing factual, that is; but every one of our stories suddenly had a hundred more parts and sequels, also waiting to be told, nothing could be followed to the end, though we wanted to reach an end and understand finally why he loved me and why I loved him; needless to say, coming from two seemingly wholly different worlds, our stories were concocted from historical, social, cultural, and psychological fragments, a kind of intellectual dialogue in which often a single word could be clarified only by using another hundred, to say nothing of the fact that only he was speaking his native language, exploiting and delighting in this advantage, creating more and more puzzles and mysteries for me as we went along, so an inordinate amount of time and attention had to be devoted to developing a common language, to clarifying meaning; and still what we said was a little shaky, a little tentative, I could never be sure he understood me correctly, while he was forever amplifying, inferring, interpreting; we spent irritatingly long periods clearing up misunderstandings, defining terms, explaining expressions, idioms, grammatical rules and exceptions, but these seemed only playful exercises for him and a sheer waste of time for me; in fact, they were the natural and, in a certain sense, symbolic obstacles to true understanding, cognition, and mastery that could not, and perhaps need not, be overcome with intelligent discourse; just as in the intricate system of a language we invariably reach a point where any insistence on logic will hinder rather than promote mastery, our verbal showers, torrents, and floods also reached their terminal points — one more phrase beyond that point and our glance strayed; distracted, we felt our pulse in our fingertips or noticed the reflection in the other's eyes of a candle's leaping flame, as if the eyes were illuminated from the inside and turned into an inviting blue space, which through the dark gates of the pupils our gaze could enter; he couldn't stand living here, he said, as if talking of someone else, smiling at his own words, he couldn't stand being here! not that it bothered him at all that everything here was supposed to be corrupt, false, rotten to the core, and that everything he touched was twisted and slippery and unreal, no, he was amused by all that, he knew it all too well; if anything, he considered himself very lucky to have been born in a place where a state of emergency had been in effect for fifty years — this was worth pondering — where for half a century not one honest word had been uttered in public, not one, not even when you were talking with your neighbor, a place where Adolf Hitler had scored a knockout victory! where at least one didn't have to bother with unnecessary illusions, because beyond a certain level, a level "we way surpassed," as he put it, he considered lies quite human, quite normal, and he should be permitted the perverse pleasure of not calling a system that ran on lies and fed on lies "inhuman," of not crying "fascist state," as the rest of the world did, for at least this was up front! it was outrageously up front always to say the opposite of what one might be thinking, to do the opposite of what one would like to do, to build on the simple premise that the urge to lie, to cover up, to be secretive and sly, was at least as strong as the urge to be sincere, open, and aboveboard, to seek the so-called truth, which, by the way, we find equally hard to take; and just as humanism tried to institutionalize common sense and reason, fascism institutionalized unadulterated lies, and that was all right too, because, if one wished to look at it that way, it was just another version of the truth, but who the hell cared, anyway, it was all politics, everything he said was, and he didn't give a shit about any of it, not about their truths or their lies, his own included, not a shit about their theories and sentiments, not to mention his own theories and sentiments, about which he also didn't give a shit — not angrily, just mildly amused; he knew all too much about the inner workings of lying not to respect and love it; he considered it a sacred thing, he really did; it was good to lie, it was necessary and pleasurable; he, for one, lied all the time, he was lying right now, every word a lie, so I shouldn't take anything he said seriously but just as a joke, I shouldn't trust him, rely on him, count on him; he knew, for instance, that for all my tact I detested this room because I thought it was a fake; I shouldn't take offense, but he felt I was bourgeois at heart, of an earlier vintage, and I lied timidly, I wrapped my lies in tissue paper; he liked this room precisely because it was a fake, he had made it this way not because he wanted to, he didn't even know what a room should look like to be called really his, he didn't know and didn't care to know! if he left it empty, as he'd originally planned, it still would have looked fake, so between two fake looks he chose this one; he didn't want his room to look the way a room was supposed to look, just as he himself wasn't what he was supposed to be, so let's be consistent in our lies, let's not put the ugly next to the beautiful, the good next to the bad, lies go better with lies, and so on; and the way I lied didn't escape his notice, either: he was taking a stand now, of course, this was a protest, an act of defiance and aggression, in this sense, he must admit, he couldn't deny his Germanness; I need only think of Nietzsche, if I was familiar with his work, of how relentlessly and precisely he rails against a God that didn't exist — he had to laugh every time he thought of it — and thus he fashions Him from His absence, from the desperate anger he felt over His absence; he longs for Him, but should He exist, he'd promptly destroy Him; yes, Melchior wanted to make a show of the fact that he couldn't live here, yet he did, and though he kept bumping into strange, superfluous objects, he knew how to get around them, he was used to them and even liked their falseness; although he didn't believe for a moment that it might be better elsewhere, he was all set to leave, he was simply tired of this place, and he would try to get away, even if it cost his life, which it might, but he didn't give a damn about his life; not that he wanted to commit suicide, but were he to die, now or tomorrow, he'd find it perfectly appropriate; I should try to imagine a life that in all of twenty-eight years had given him only one moment he would call real or genuine, and he knew exactly what that moment was: it happened when he was recovering from an illness that almost proved fatal, and that he'd already told me about when I asked him about the two long scars on his belly, when he'd told me about his two operations; he was seventeen at the time; he climbed out of bed and for the first time after the operation tried to stand up; he had to concentrate just to stay on his feet and hold on to furniture and watch his balance, so he didn't really know what he was doing, didn't notice that the first thing he wanted to get to was his violin, the case was lying on a shelf, all dusty; I couldn't possibly imagine, he said, what such a black case can mean to a violinist! he realized what he was doing when he was already holding it in his hands, ready to smash it — not smash it, really, not destroy it completely, just make it unusable, maybe knock it against the sharp edge of the shelf or punch a hole in it, not that he had the strength to do anything like that! all he saw was a blur, a soft, dim blur, but he heard loud noises, it sounded like a power saw screeching as it cut into wood; he was alone in the house, he could have done anything he liked, but couldn't, really, he was so weak, his own physical condition preventing him from doing what he had so much wanted to do; he barely had strength to slip the violin onto the dark green velvet of the case, and then he collapsed, and as everything seemed slowly to be growing dark he passed out; but what he really did then was to smash within himself whatever that violin had meant to him; the violin, he realized, was not meant to keep alive the wonder his otherwise pathetically provincial playing had inspired in his audience, it wasn't meant to sustain the benevolent fiction with which his mother deceived him and he, in turn, deceived himself and everyone else who admired him as a child prodigy, who thought that playing the violin made him different from other children, finer, more special, one of the elect; he was the prima donna of a dead object! no, the violin existed for itself, it wanted to play itself, fusing its own physical possibilities with those of a human being, and whoever had the gift of genius would always hover on that very fine line where the object ceases to be an object and the player ceases to be human, where the ambition to draw sound from an instrument is no longer personal but is focused entirely on the object itself; and he seemed to be talented enough to realize this, that no matter how diligent and attentive he was, he could never make the violin sing, the only thing he could coax out of it was the deceptive ambition to be exceptional, and he never wanted to do that again, he would never again touch the violin; they all pleaded with him, implored him to play, for they didn't understand; neither did he, not completely, but he could never touch it again.

He had first hung it on the wall back then, in that boy's room of his, because it was beautiful! he didn't want it to be anything else, anything more than a shapely object, let it hang there undisturbed, content, that's why he hung it on the wall here, too, let his violin, at least, remain what it was; though now that he had told me the story, and this was the first time he had ever told anyone, it seemed that what he had so lovingly cherished in his memory might not even be completely true; perhaps he only used it to justify his despair, his cynicism, his frustration, his cowardice, feelings akin to the sudden attack of nerves, the paralysis evoked by an even earlier revelation that he'd also told me about, which happened when he once asked his mother, quite casually, playfully even, whether it was possible that he was not the son of the dead man whose name he carried, since on photographs he had never been able to discover the slightest family resemblance, maybe he was someone else's son, and as his mother she ought to know, he was a big boy now, she could tell him; How did you know? she cried — she happened to be washing dishes and swung around, her face suddenly looking as though it were full of long, wriggling worms; he knew nothing, nothing at all, what should he know? it was as if his own death were staring back at him, his end was literally in sight; and from her cry he understood that, unexpectedly and quite senselessly, the two of them were thrown into a state of mortal danger when, in anticipation of rigor mortis and before any decisive action is possible, limbs and sense organs turn stiff and numb, only the skin quivers a little; he was staring into dead eyes; for the longest time they couldn't escape each other's presence, and until late in the evening they didn't even move from the kitchen sink, because it was there she told him the story of the French prisoner of war who was his real father, a story he'd already told me once; it was after this incident that he got sick, though he didn't think his illness had anything to do with the shock of finding out, or at least that was unlikely; you see, he said, when you don't have a father you make one up; then it turns out you don't even have the made-up one, the only thing you've got is his absence, as with God; and now he knew that this was the reason it had been so important for his mother that he not be like the others — hence the violin! — that he be exceptional, which he wasn't, that he not be German, even if he was; but what he hadn't told me yet — he suddenly thought of it now — was what happened after the hospital: for two months he lay in the ward for the terminally ill where patients kept changing so rapidly that in fact he was the only one who remained terminally ill, no one else was left alive; he enjoyed his rare status while his stomach kept filling up with pus; the doctors saw no reason to perform another operation and just stuck a tube in his stomach to drain the pus, he still had a bump there, I should look at it sometime; they simply didn't know what to do with him; he was a goner, but not the proper kind, because he couldn't even die properly, so after two months they asked his mother, who in the meantime had been going insane and gray with guilt, to take him home; she was wasting away, trembling constantly; she kept dropping things, and her eyes seemed to be asking for mercy, but he, no matter how much he would have liked to, could not forgive her; she hovered over him like a ghost, as though every sip of water she got him to swallow was an acquittal, as if that sin she had committed long ago — I must remember, a German woman with a Frenchman! and though at the time, luckily, she had been spared the punishment for criminal miscegenation, "she did rot in jail for three months with me in her belly" — as if that sin came back to haunt her after all those years, but this, too, was a story for another day; anyway, their family doctor, who visited him twice a week, once on an impulse asked him to open his mouth, let's see those teeth, young man; a couple of weeks after they extracted two of his molars he was fit as a fiddle and he'd never had a problem since, as I could see for myself, so, thanks to those two rotten teeth, maybe we could finally extricate ourselves from the slimy depths of his soul; but all joking aside, he must honestly tell me that he was grateful, yes, profoundly grateful to me, because for the first time he dared say out loud all the things he had learned about himself; to him, I was a little like that dentist who had pulled those tiny Adolf Hitlers from his mouth; I had wrenched something from him, and also solved something for him; while talking to me he began to see things more clearly, things he'd never been aware of before, even if he still couldn't talk about them properly; and since he was by nature incredibly self-centered, he believed this to be the reason I had to enter his life, because all the things he'd told me he could share only with a foreigner; yes, he will go away, that much is certain, he has had enough of being a stranger here, and it's better to leave with a clear head, without reproach and hatred, and perhaps he can thank me for that, because I am also a stranger here.

I must have said something to the effect that he was exaggerating again, I didn't believe I could be so important to him, that wasn't the way major decisions were made.

He said he wasn't exaggerating at all; when thanks were due, one must be properly thankful; and his eyes filled with tears.

Maybe that's when I touched his face and gently reminded him that Pierre was also a foreigner.

But with him he didn't speak in his native language, he said, Pierre was French, and in a way he was French, too, even if his native tongue was German.

French, my foot, I said; he was being overly nice, which was flattering, of course, but I wasn't asking for any kind of proof, he must believe me, I simply felt… but what I really felt I could not say out loud.

So I just said that I'd be ashamed to say it out loud.

I held his face in my hands, and he held my face in his, the gestures were identical, yet our intentions seemed to be at odds; it's possible that I didn't even mention my shame, didn't say it out loud, afraid that if I went further and said the word, I would have to be truly ashamed, because he would respond the only way he knew, with cold reserve and suggestive irony, with his perennial, exasperatingly beautiful smile, and then my own embarrassment would spoil something that must not be spoiled at any cost, I would deprive my hand of the warmth of his face, of its smoothness, of the stubble's crackle under my fingers, which I especially liked, though on our first night it had still elicited resistance from me, caused by the dread of the familiarly unfamiliar, a resistance that was also an attraction enticing me to cross the border between smoothness and coarseness on the face of a man, with my mouth to touch another mouth that was also ringed with stubble, to feel the same kind of strength from it that I was imparting to it, as if receiving back not his strength but my own; "Why, it's my father's mouth!" someone shouted in my voice on our first night when he leaned over to kiss me on the lips, and I could hear the scraping and blending of whiskers on our chins, the stubble on our father's chins touching the smooth skin of our forgotten childhood selves! I sank pleasurably into the loathsomeness of self-love and self-hatred, yes, I can see clearly now that we had to stop talking, although we hardly noticed that this was no longer talking; I began to love the self-loathing I had left behind; what I loved about it was that it blotted out everything that would still make me fearful and anxious; with him, I literally stepped over my father's corpse, I could finally forgive him, and although I couldn't be entirely sure which of the two was my father, I was cleansed; they were together now, fused, and there was silence now, only our bodies were talking; a profusion of words was still droning in my ears, because it takes a while for the brain to process verbal stimuli and to store them in their proper compartments and receptacles, and even after the buzz of this sorting operation abated, there remained scraps and fragments that somehow didn't fit in the large storehouse of received information; oddly enough, these strays were unimportant details of some communication:

French death, for instance, was a phrase that meant absolutely nothing, and the gesture, the way I drew his face closer and held his chin in my hands, barely touching the skin of his face with my fingertips, was nothing more than an unconscious means to an unclear end; neither of us could go on talking anymore; earlier, while he was talking, although he held my gaze captive as if in my eyes he had found the only secure point to which he could anchor himself, it didn't seem that he was looking only at me, that I was the only subject of his scrutiny; gazing at me like this allowed him to retreat into himself, to regions where he would not venture alone; but now, his retreat enabled me to enter this otherwise forbidden territory, and the more his gaze became fixed in mine and I became a subject of his gaze, the farther he could push himself away from me — I had to be on the alert — and the farther I could retreat along with him; and because I was with him, he could handle his real subject with even cooler, more cerebral, and elegantly meandering sentences, adorned with an even softer smile; and his real subject was his thoughts, his memories; let's call it by its name: the solitude caused by the sheer existence of the body, the sensation of being alive in a space felt to be dead! and then this smiling coldness removed him so completely from the story of his body that he could see its little episodes almost with my eyes — hence his gratitude, perhaps, for being able to sense, if only in a flash, how dead space might perceive a living form, to sense that even I could become one with that alien outside world; hence the wetness in his eyes, a wetness that produced no tears to roll down his cheeks but only blurred his image of me and obscured that other, more distant sight he beheld; his embarrassment over this physical change pulled him back from that interior landscape; the thing he'd fixed his eyes on turned back into a person, me; to match the speed of his return, I had to back out of his eyes just as quickly, but scared of losing what I had gained, I pressed his knee between my knees and bent forward slightly to touch his face, while he, pressing my knee between his, also bent forward to touch my face.

To touch.

Just to touch, and to feel.

Sometimes we listened to music, or he would read something to me out loud, or I would recite Hungarian poetry to him; I wanted him to feel, to understand the poems, was eager to prove that there was such a language, a language in which I could also express myself reasonably well; he was amused, chuckling occasionally, even letting his mouth drop open like a child when shown a new toy; I was light and carefree; dressed or naked, we fell asleep in each other's arms on the divan in the dim hallway, while outside it darkened and was evening again, another winter evening; candles had to be lit, the curtain drawn, so we could sit there again, facing each other, well into the night, sometimes into early morning, when the room had cooled off; the clock on the wall ticked away peacefully, the candles smoked as they guttered, and we drank heavy Bulgarian red wine out of dainty crystal glasses; hours turned into days, days into weeks, carrying us almost imperceptibly from autumn into winter, when each morning our poplar tree, like its own laced skeleton, drifted into ever softer mists; I would find giving an account of this time as difficult as it would be to answer the question of what right I have to include his feelings in this recollection of a shared past, the feelings of a stranger; on what grounds can I claim that this or that happened to us, when I feel equipped to talk only about myself, to describe with reasonable accuracy only the things that happened to me? there's no answer to the question, or maybe the only answer is that one winter evening I realized just how much we loved each other, if love means the fervor and depth of mutual attachment; yes, that may be the answer, even if just a few weeks or at most a month later we noticed that something had ominously changed in us, in him as well as in me, and kept changing, ever more threateningly, until it reached a point where I had to close my eyes so as not to see him like this and hope that when I opened them again all the disconcerting hints would have vanished, and his face, and his hand in my hand, would be the same as before — at the moment I seemed to be clutching the stump of my own hand — and his smile would be the same, too, because nothing had changed, nothing could have changed; I don't remember exactly when, calendar time meant nothing to us then, but it must have been at the end of November or the beginning of December, my only point of reference is Thea's opening, for which Melchior joined me, though by then they were no longer on speaking terms, so in all probability it was shortly before then, at the height of her pre-opening-night frenzy and panic, that she came up there one evening, hoping to find Melchior alone — I remember supporting her in that hope — but she found only me, and that meeting also made things different, although on the surface nothing had changed; he and I went on sitting in our chairs, just as we had done before, the candles were burning the same way, and it was as quiet as before; the room hadn't changed, the phone didn't ring, neither did the doorbell, nobody wanted anything from us and we didn't want anything from anybody; it was almost like sitting in a gallery above the ruins of a deserted and depopulated European city, with not much hope of being liberated, and though there may have been others out there sitting in similar rooms, it was unlikely we would ever hook up with them; our solitary togetherness, made exciting earlier by our having to hide and pretend, turned unpleasant now, I don't know why; I realized, of course, that it was on my account that he had driven everyone away, locked us in, unplugged the telephone, and would not answer the doorbell, yet I couldn't help reproaching him for it, not openly of course, because everything he did he did for me; I tried to block out these thoughts by closing my eyes, but it didn't help; what disturbed me most was the thought that we'd grown so very close, I just had to back off, loosen the bond; it was as if I had just become aware of our closeness and suddenly found it revolting, unbearable; I had to find some unfamiliar ground, something I could not have known before, and neither could he, something that could in no way be his, something unshared; and when I opened my eyes again his face struck me as being a little more distant and indifferent, a stranger's face, and the discovery was both pleasant and painful, because any strange face can raise in us the hope of recognition or the possibility of getting to know it better, but this face was vacant and boring, holding out no hope at all, I'd had my fill of it; I might have gotten to know it these past few weeks, but the knowledge was insignificant, like so much else I'd picked up, because it seemed that no amount of knowledge, not even dangerous knowledge, helped me to find a safe haven within myself, a foothold of devotion and permanence; so it was a mere adventure, then, an unprofitable one, for in the end he remained a stranger to me, as I remained a stranger to him, and I didn't understand how I could have thought him beautiful when he was ugly, no, not even ugly, only boring, a man, one I couldn't possibly have anything to do with — a man.

I hated myself, I found myself disgusting.

And he may have had similar thoughts, or sensed what I'd been thinking, because he withdrew his hand — at last I was free of that horrible stump — stood up, kicked the armchair aside, and turned on the TV.

This was so deliberately rude, I let it go, I didn't say a word.

Then I got up, too, kicked the chair out of the way, and walked into the hallway.

Almost at random I picked a book off the shelf and, making myself believe I was really interested in it, stretched out on the soft dark rug and began to read.

At first the patterns of the rug distracted me, and the archaic style of the book was no small obstacle either, but then I got into it, reading that the only true temple was the temple of the human body, that nothing was more sacred and sublime than the human form; it was nice to stumble on these words on that friendly, warm rug, to read that when we bow down to man, we pay tribute to revelation in flesh; to touch the human body is to touch heaven.

I tried to understand the concept, inappropriate though it seemed at this moment, and not pay attention to some woman climbing out a window, clutching at the creeping ivy, plaster falling, she screams and leaps; then it seemed that everything would blow over, only one thing bothered me still, that I'd given the armchair such an angry kick; ambulance screeching to a halt, the clattering of instruments, we're in an operating room; it seemed like such an unimportant thing, plain silly, yet I couldn't help feeling I'd been rude; I should have seen what I was doing, kicking the armchair like that, and it wasn't even my chair; sounds of funereal music, the woman must have died, she's probably being buried; I shouldn't have done it, I might have damaged the thing; one shouldn't kick someone else's chair, even if the human body is a sublime temple; he could kick the armchair because it's his; I shouldn't have, yet I did and felt good about it.

Later I asked him in a rather loud voice if I should leave.

Without turning his head, he said I should do as I saw fit.

I asked him if he held anything against me, because I wouldn't want that.

He could ask me the same thing.

I emphasized I held nothing against him.

He just wanted to watch this movie now.

This particular movie?

Yes.

Then he should go ahead and watch it.

That's exactly what he was doing.

The oddest part of all this was that we couldn't possibly have avoided the real issues more objectively; we were more explicitly truthful than if we had said what was on our minds; more precisely, our lies and subtle evasions defined the situation more honestly than emotions might have, for at the moment our emotions were too violent to be true.

I couldn't go away and he couldn't hold me back.

And this bare fact, emerging from the background of his words, proved to be a stronger bond than a pact sealed in blood.

But because of our lies, something, or the emanation of something, perhaps a compelling force that had been there before, moving between us with the naturalness of instincts, now seemed to have abated; it didn't disappear completely, only stopped; at any rate, something was no longer there; and in this absence I sensed what I had felt before.

And I knew that he sensed this, too.

There it was, still flickering like the bluish television screen, almost tangibly filling the space between the room and the hallway, maybe we could still reach it or stop it for good, but it was precisely its vibrating immobility, independent of us, that paralyzed us both, unable to make the slightest move, as if with cool reason it were suggesting that we had no other choice but to accept and endure this immobility, this was the only bond between us, and it was as strong as judgment itself; it was as if for the first time an outsider had shown us the true nature of our relationship — now, just as it was jolted in its course.

In situations like these, we automatically consider and rapidly weigh the most obvious and therefore simplest practical solution; but getting up, kicking his slippers off my feet, putting on my shoes and coat, and leaving seemed impossible, and absurd, for after all, what had happened here? nothing! — so to do all that would have been just too awkward and tedious, it would have taken too much effort and would have been unbearably dramatic. But it was just as impossible to maintain my relaxed pose on the rug, that would have offended my sense of propriety for another reason; after all, I was lying on his rug, and the question of ownership — let's not forget, it's a measure of being at another's mercy— can be more crucial than our emotions, even in the case of true love; I should go away, I should get up and leave, I kept repeating to myself, as if just saying it would make it happen, but I stayed and pretended to be reading, just as he pretended to be watching the screen.

Neither of us made a move.

He sat with his back to me, in the blue effulgence of the TV screen, and I was leaning over my book; though this may be a trifle, it bothered me more than anything else that I was holding myself stiff, because it gave me away; and although he couldn't see me, I knew that emotionally we were keeping track of each other's moves very precisely, so he was as aware of my feigned nonchalance as I was of his forced concentration on the screen; while pretending to be watching that stupid movie, he was actually watching me, and he knew that I knew; nevertheless, something compelled us to play this transparent little game, which was more offensive than any candid response would have been, yet also, despite its seriousness, quite funny, amusing in fact.

I was waiting, biding my time, and thought he would make use of this funny, amusing quality to find the last opening we could squeeze through and escape the trap of our own pompous gravity; to be more precise, I wasn't actually thinking all this but, rather, sensed that behind the tragic pose there lurked an urge to laugh.

Because this was a game, and now it was his move; a clumsy little game of feelings it was, a transparent, trivial game whose rules nevertheless forced us to observe the measures and proportions needed for human relationship; what makes us play this game is our taste for a fair fight and our eternal desire to get even; and precisely because this was a game in the purest sense of the word, I could no longer be indifferent to him or consider him a stranger; I was playing with him, wasn't I, we were playing together, the joint undertaking was bound to temper my hostility; still, I couldn't move, I couldn't say anything, I had to wait; I'd already had my chance and played my best card when I lied and said I didn't have anything against him; now, according to the rules, it was his turn.

The tense anticipation, a moment of truth hovering in the air, the invisible third person who had touched him and had touched me as well, that certain compelling force that was present but no longer functioning— and it was hard to say whether it was emanating from me toward him or the other way around, or was simply hanging in the air, making it so dense that it "could be cut with a knife," as people like to quip — it all reminded me of my first night there; we felt it then, too, when he went into the kitchen to get the champagne.

He had left the door open and I should have heard something, little noises, the refrigerator door opening, the muffled thud as he closed it, the clinking of glasses or his footsteps; but later, when we had drifted too far apart for things to make any sense and as a defense began to review our shared experiences and piece together the fragments, he told me that he had stopped by the kitchen window that evening, watching and listening to the rain, and without knowing why could not move away, as if he didn't want to go back to the room but wanted me to sense the dead silence of his helplessness; and I did, I sensed his expectation and indecision; he wanted me to be aware that the rain, the dark rooftops, the very moment itself were more important to him than I was, waiting for him in his room, though he had to admit that my waiting made him very happy; and it was this feeling, so rarely experienced, that he would have liked somehow to share with me.

He got up and, as if now, too, he was just going to the kitchen, started walking toward me.

Though we couldn't yet tell what we would decide to do, we both felt that the decision, whatever it might be, had already been made.

Then suddenly, as if he'd changed his mind and decided not to go to the kitchen, he lowered himself next to me on the rug, supporting himself on his elbows; he put his face comfortably into his hand, he was half lying, half sitting, and we looked into each other's eyes.

It was one of those rare moments when he wasn't smiling.

He looked at me as if from very far away, not really at me but at the phenomenon I had become for him at the moment, just as I was looking at him the way we look at an object whose beauty and worth cannot be denied, in spite of our resistance, but nevertheless which isn't identical with what we could love; the beauty we saw was not the one he loved, or the one I thought I'd loved.

And then he said quietly, This is what it's like.

And I asked him what he had in mind.

What he had in mind, he said, was what I must be feeling.

Hatred, I said. I could say it out loud, because it wasn't quite that anymore.

Why hatred? would I tell him? could I?

A shock of curly blond hair, a forest of hair, a luxuriant mane; the smooth skin taut over the high forehead with its two pronounced bulges; the soft hollow of the temples; dense, dark eyebrows adorned with some longer hairs; although thinner and narrower over the ridge of the nose, the brows met and mingled with lighter hairs as they curved up toward the forehead and then descended in an even lighter, downier arch into the shell-like indentation of the temples, at once shading and accentuating the finely cushioned eyelids, themselves divided by long, curled dark lashes, forming a living and moving frame around the black centers of the pupils dilating and contracting smoothly in the blue of his eyes; what a blue that was! how strong and cold! and how strange the blue eyes seemed, framed in black on the milk-white skin; and the black dissolving into blond with the greatest of ease; all these intrusive colors! the nose, its spine descending in a straight line to the flaring base, blended at a steep angle into the low region of the face, but with an elegant flourish, curling back into itself, it also encircled the dark little caves of the nostrils, only to continue, imperceptibly and under the skin, and protrude in the form of two delicate hillocks above the lips, connecting, symbolically almost, the inner lobes of the nostrils with the rim of the upper lip, bringing into harmony total opposites: the vertical line of the nose with the horizontal of the mouth, the oblong face, the perfectly round head, and the lips! those coupling slabs of flesh, their rawness barely concealed.

He shouldn't be angry with me, that's all I was asking.

And the only way I could prove that I meant what I'd said was to kiss him, but this was no longer the mouth but just another mouth, and mine, too, was just a mouth, so this wasn't going to work.

Why should he be angry; he wasn't angry.

Maybe it wasn't even his features but the movements of his lips, parting and closing as they formed words, the mechanical motion itself that, for all his calm, exhaled an infinite coolness, or could I myself have been so cold at the time? or both of us? but everything, everything changed! his face, his mouth, mostly his mouth, opening and closing, and my arm feeling the weight of my body, the strain of being in that position turning it numb, and his hand as he propped himself up, as though all this was but the mechanics of that unfamiliar force manifesting itself in the physical properties of our bodies, we might have possessed this compelling force, but our every move was defined by those properties, everything was determined by them; to put it another way, I may feel God residing in me, yet no motion can be other than what is prescribed by my physical form, every gesture must take place within the limits set by this form, which also sets the patterns for that compelling force; thus, the effect produced by a gesture can be only a signal, an allusion, nothing more than the perception of the purposeful functioning of these physical forms; I may take pleasure in perceiving a familiar pattern realized, and take it to be a real feeling, but it's nothing but self-enjoyment; I am not enjoying him, I merely see a form, a pattern, not him, but a signal, an allusion; the only thing we enjoy in each other is that our bodies function in similar ways, his movements elicit identical patterns in me, immediately making it clear what he is after; amusing ourselves with mirrors, that's all we were doing, the rest was self-deception; and this realization then was as if in the middle of enjoying a piece of music I'd suddenly started paying attention to the physical workings of the instruments, to the strings and hammers, and the musical sounds themselves grew distant.

I said I was sorry, but I didn't understand anything.

Why must I understand, he asked, what was there to understand?

I told him not to be angry with me, but there was nothing else I could say; maybe now I'd be able to tell him what I'd kept quiet about last time because I'd thought it was too sentimental, and although he had been most curious to hear it, I'd feared ruining something then; but now, I hoped, he wouldn't be offended, I could tell him that even his movements were not that important to me, it just didn't matter anymore that he could touch me or I him, because whatever we might do — and there was nothing we couldn't do — it had been arranged this way and that's all there was to it! and somehow we had been together, he and I, long before we became acquainted, only we didn't know it; would he believe it if I told him that we had been together for almost thirty years? that was my obsession, my idée fixe, and now I could say it: I believed he was my brother.

He burst into hearty laughter, he guffawed, and as soon as I said the word I had to laugh, too; to take the edge off his guffaw, he touched my face with the tips of his fingers, gently, patiently; and the reason we had to laugh, I was laughing, too, was not only that what I had said, in a voice charged with emotion, was embarrassingly gauche — not to mention that it was not at all what I had meant to say — but also that the word itself, "brother," in his language, and in our particular situation, did not mean the same thing it did in mine; as soon as the word slipped out, I noticed my error, because one immediately had to think of the little adjective "warm," which had to be attached to the word "brother" if one wanted to say "queer," warmer Bruder, in his language; so what I had said to him, in a voice charged with emotion, was that he was my little faggot, which may have been a witty wordplay, if only I hadn't said it so emotionally, but this way it was like mentioning rope in a hanged man's house, a well-intentioned gesture gone laughably awry, and we did laugh, he in particular laughed so hard his eyes filled with tears, and it was no use explaining to him that in the Hungarian word for brother, testvér, blood and body are linked, and that's what I had in mind.

When he had calmed down a bit, and the little afterbursts of laughter were coming at longer intervals, I realized we had drifted even further apart.

He seemed to have assumed again that air of superiority with which he had looked me over on our first night together.

I told him quietly that what I had said before was not what I'd wanted to say.

He held my face, he forgave my silly slip, but his forgiveness, already past the laughter, made him appear even more superior.

What I wanted to tell him, I said, what I really wanted to tell him was something we hadn't talked about before, because I didn't want to hurt him, but now I felt this whole thing to be hopeless, and please don't be offended, I felt I was locked up in jail.

Why should he be offended; there was no reason to be offended.

Perhaps, I said, we should stop seeing each other for a while.

Well, yes, that's why he'd said before that this is what it's like, now I could see it for myself, but then I'd pretended not to understand.

I didn't.

The truth was, he continued, he hadn't thought about it either, for once, with me, he also forgot that this is what it's like, and just a few minutes earlier, when he sensed on my hand that it was over, he was surprised, and terrified; but he assumed that this was how long the thing was meant to last, and not longer; and while he was pretending to watch TV, he had to realize that if I felt that way, he would just have to accept it, and that made him feel better, because — I had to believe him — he knew from experience that two men, or as I was kind enough to put it before, two brothers — and he let out one more tiny burst of laughter, though it could have been a sob, too — two men simply cannot take it for long, and there were no exceptions; what I had tried to do was to force on our relationship the emotional standards I'd been used to with women, and he couldn't help it if I had such a muddled past, but I shouldn't forget that with a woman, which ruled out both of us, it was possible to make something of the relationship even if I knew there was no chance, for no disqualifying circumstance could upset the chances of natural continuity; between two men, however, what you had was always just what you had, no more, no less; and for this reason, in a situation like this, the best thing to do was to get up, stop playing games, find some excuse, and clear out quickly and gracefully, and never come back, never even look back; what I could take with me this way would be more precious to both of us than if I tried to deceive myself; with all due respect, him I couldn't deceive; he didn't mean to rub it in, but he was beyond all that, he knew these routines all too well, so really, the only sensible thing to do was not to give him another thought, ever.

I said he was trying to play the ruthless male, not to mention the fascist, just a little too transparently.

I was being sentimental, he said.

Maybe, I said, but I couldn't express myself properly in this rotten language.

He'd do the expressing for me.

Please, stop acting silly.

Is that what he was doing? he asked.

He could go on acting silly, if he liked.

Did I still know what we were talking about?

Did he?