Parallel Stories

Anus mundi

You won’t be the first in the history of the world, my pretty one, don’t be so conceited, but I can tell you now that you’ll panic as badly as if you were.

She must stay on top, must not slide back. If she can’t find the notes and be confident, if she keeps sliding back, she can say good-bye to a singing career.

Take my word for it.

Randomly she hit a semitone on Mrs. Szemző’s piano.

Again, the same F sharp.

The living soul of destroyed people and objects made themselves heard in the summer evening, and she followed them willingly with her voice.

After a beat she sang the note and then hit the key again and sang into the sound. She was very sensitive to sounds her own hearing longed for. She had ideas about tonality that she tried to formulate with her own vocal organs. But producing sound always kills hearing; she could not hear herself from the outside when singing. Once again, as if to double-check, she hit the key and paused, but the pause turned into emptiness and she quickly told herself, no, this won’t do, not like this, not this.

I won’t find it, she said to herself, I can’t find it.

She would have had to synchronize different elements.

She was also struggling with an urge to weep because of Ágost.

Yet she couldn’t have said why, since she was happy with him.

I simply blame him.

Why is everyone allowed to humiliate me with what they know, she shouted to herself, torn by doubt, even though she was so happy that nothing could crush the strength swelling in her body at this moment, spreading and working in her cells.

Everything was swelling and expanding.

You, Gyöngyvér, she admonished herself in Margit Huber’s voice, you keep on blaming others for your own weaknesses, and she readily owned up to this recurring error for which her teacher often rebuked her.

Pardon me, my dear, but that is ridiculous.

I do make myself ridiculous with this man, but how can I stay away from him.

Actually, she could not have expressed what she had heard in the night, or what she was looking for, or whether she’d find in her memory what her hearing continually whispered to her from behind her inner speech or offered in place of inner speech — what she desired so ardently that she’d want to sing it.

It’s impossible to sing in general, dear child, you should really understand this and accept it as an axiom.

She’d like to give musical form to her need to weep.

Just because you won’t accept it doesn’t mean it isn’t an axiom. It still remains an axiom that you must give everything a form.

She had no reason to be bitter; she should have been truly happy with this man. She patted her tight little belly several times with her spread fingers to check whether she might have suddenly conceived.

You have to give form even to formlessness, don’t you understand. Why don’t you understand.

You can sing only something and only somehow, Gyöngyvér, and if you don’t find an original form for it, said Margit Huber, raising her voice and pounding wildly on the piano to show this stupid girl what happens to sounds without any original form, chaos, that’s what happens, nothing, nada, and then all your weltschmerz isn’t worth a brass farthing. Your enthusiasm is also worthless, worth nothing, hysteria, zilch, do you understand, dear, nothing, she yelled as she banged frantically on the piano.

But she hadn’t relinquished her ethereal smile, which still managed to enchant Gyöngyvér.

When you take a breath just before a phrase, you should already know what you are going to do with it.

Those two F sharps, for example, slipped away again at the end.

Careful, don’t grasp the sound from below, Gyöngyvér.

Instead of the sought-after forms, Gyöngyvér Mózes found all sorts of things that only made her want to weep more. How can I know why and what I do when I’m singing, or why I can’t do something. For the sake of forming the right sounds, time should be suspended; she was just chasing a little girl’s wishes, empty daydreams. How wonderful it would be to become a famous singer instantly, all her efforts in that direction suddenly and simultaneously to bear fruit, and she, with her grand feelings, appearing on the stage of every great opera house in the world. Little Médi would stare at her with wide eyes, wouldn’t she. She could see herself getting out of the taxi, gathering the collar of her mink coat close about her neck, and not giving a single autograph to anyone.

These grand feelings included the belief that she actually spoke Italian; all that was needed was enlightenment.

No big deal.

Sometimes she tested it; she waited long and patiently for her mind to become enlightened, the mind that used her present feelings to conceal many feelings from her earlier life.

When she concentrated long enough on finding what lurked behind these feelings, she saw clearly that consciousness of things past glimmered through them. It was only from her earlier life that she could summon the idea that she’d once been a man, Italian and castrated, and only infinite modesty and bashfulness kept her from making contact with the genuine knowledge she had accumulated in her former life. All right, she doesn’t know the words in Italian, or doesn’t know their meaning since in her former life she did not know Hungarian, but gradually everything will come to her and then, based on her present Hungarian knowledge, she’ll be able to analyze all the things she’d known before. It’s not a matter of her learning them, because Italian words and Italian grammatical structures are already in her brain. She must find the way to reach them somehow. Whenever she struggled to find her way back to forgotten knowledge, making crude mistakes and discovering silly technical inadequacies in the process, problems appeared in her consciousness that were the very ones to which Margit Huber continuously called her attention and which nonetheless she could not solve.

You’re always after success, my child.

But it’s impossible to note the many things you asked me to, all at the same time, and to remember them.

Stop sniveling. Feeling sorry for yourself won’t help a bit.

If every single day you warmed up your voice by practicing scales several times, you can be sure you’d find it.

If only she could at last sing freely, instead of this eternal practicing of scales.

Maybe if you didn’t make me stop so often I could sing.

After so much uncontrolled shouting, I can’t be expected to have a voice, she thought, very content with her exhausted and naked body. As if in her great self-satisfaction she were saying, all right, so I’m not talented; no matter how much I may blame Médike I’m a complete antitalent, irresponsible, and the laziest person in the world; and it’s true I don’t practice enough, and anyway I imagine I’m a great natural talent who doesn’t need all this practicing. I’ve got a great body and I don’t lose my musicality even when fucking, nobody can doubt that; and this time this guy really fucked me but good, I think in this great fucking session I finally found my match.

No matter how much I rail against him or he pretends he doesn’t want me.

For him, at least, I am one hot female.

You undress them and right away see what you can expect. That’s good for the woman, she can see by looking at their briefs.

And now he’s fucked my brains out and I’ve screamed my voice to pieces because of him. And Jesus, did I ever try to hold myself back. Not to harm his delicate ears, such a gentleman. He was screaming too, like an animal; no wonder I’ve gone deaf.

She felt she did not love this man either, no, not really; she felt only contempt for him. And this stupid feeling was frustrating her intentions. That’s why she does not like what she nevertheless wants so much from him.

If we keep this up much longer, I’ll lose my hearing, not just my voice.

A strong smell of catnip pervaded the warm summer night air trapped in Mrs. Szemző’s rooms.

Now of course he’s fallen asleep exhausted, my sweet, my darling, in his own good smell, oh my God, look at him.

If she could, she’d have run back to be with him on the bed in the maid’s room, this wonderful man who caused her those insane climaxes and whom not one of her nerves could get enough of. No, she couldn’t get enough of him. She encouraged her nerve endings: tomorrow, later, in a minute, next week, everything will come true, ripen, and she is very grateful to him for this, for this promising future. Everything she needed for singing, her heart, her mind, her lungs were full of him, her head and her chest almost exploded with the memory of his fabulous fragrance now emanating mostly from her own skin, her short-cropped hair and her dark, rich pubic hair.

A great singer should be more careful with such unbridled screaming sessions.

Good thing I’m not a great singer yet, she said to herself, and until I am I can fuck to my heart’s content.

As if she had a terrible, strong suspicion that she’d have to squeeze all her stupid artistry into this woeful world so as not to be just a coarse female, a stupid little bitch who doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.

She wouldn’t even need men. That’s why she should reach the pinnacle of the art of singing, so she wouldn’t need them anymore.

Stay on the hilltop, Gyöngyvér, sweetheart, if you can’t climb Mount Everest, and you can see for yourself you can’t. No backsliding, no constant tripping up on little stupidities.

I’m not Médike’s sweetheart.

Except for her ambition, though, she has nothing; she can’t give up her ambition just because she lacks the necessary technical skills.

And the ugly old beast never tired of enumerating just how many skills she lacked. Once in Gyöngyvér’s presence she called somebody else a born dilettante, and Gyöngyvér was afraid that one fine day Médi would brand that on her skin too. I would never have thought this of you, Gyöngyvér, but you are a born dilettante.

And she had to have such an old fart for her singing teacher.

This was another reason she wouldn’t have dared disturb the merciless silence of the universe with practicing scales. She’d be found out as a born dilettante, born dilettante, it echoed in her head, born dilettante. But she did not go back to him either, to the bed in the maid’s room. She’d had enough of all those maid’s rooms and of men. Going back meant waking the poor man, whom she had brought up to the apartment despite Mrs. Szemző’s many bashful requests, and then they’d go back to doing it. Go ahead, sweetheart, rest; I’ll guard your sleep. They had no place else to go. They didn’t know how not to continue; they didn’t even have to touch each other for it. She felt as if they were still doing it. During those four days they had been to their family vacation house, to Visegrád, to the apartment of the man’s friend with the funny name in Ó Street, but no matter where they went every move of theirs was directed toward the same goal. The worst that can happen is that Mrs. Szemző will kick her out. I’ll just go somewhere else, a place with no piano, of course. One can’t go to bed only with men who have their own apartments. She didn’t go back to bed, because the other person would have crushed her ambition if they’d continued. She hadn’t acquired nice mink coats yet, I won’t be able to put together enough for a rotten little apartment, and with this constant fucking he will deprive her of her never-acquired jewelry.

I can’t ruin myself because of him.

The two-story villa, the villa with a sunny garden, the successive waves of applause from the balconies, along with insane cheering and frenzied ovations — she would have to give it all up in exchange.

She had better pay attention to developing her art.

Every previous occurrence had been arrested and stuck in the stale air within these dreary walls. She neither imagined nor fantasized but literally felt and lived through the entirety of past events, in the most minute detail, and all over her naked, shuddering body. While thinking she was daydreaming of her future or her opportunities, and it was not she but her audience who should be screaming with gratification.

Because occasionally, seriously and very quietly, Médike did reveal the secrets of singing.

And they will scream and carry on; Médike has nothing to worry about.

She was thinking about what this Médike demanded of her.

This is a very peculiar thing, Gyöngyvér, because you have to lead them to where you are headed, but you can get there only together with them. You don’t know them and it’s not advisable to get to know them.

Perhaps it’s not such a big problem, then, that men cannot satisfy her properly.

If only knowing this could satisfy her for once: that it’s not that important, nothing is that important, only her singing.

For all she knew they could go further, the two of them; this was the peculiar and painful feeling that was always on the surface.

And in this early morning hour it was clear to her that just as she didn’t love him, the man didn’t love her, but she would have been loathe to imagine that she hadn’t satisfied him, even though they had fucked so well together. She could not think of this, because at least in this she should feel herself to be perfect, in this big fuckfest.

Your audience must hear, my child, that even your highest notes are not strained, just as you can’t choke on the lowest ones.

She should sound as if she could go on, further, higher, so you shouldn’t be the one to strain, they should, because they are clambering after her last notes in a fashion that will take their breath away.

And she knew well where the final limit was.

Her vagina was burning, hurt from so much rubbing.

She could not choose freely among her sensations, and there was no musical note that, driven by a single controlled instinct, might have addressed and elicited a response from the enormous mass and weight of the impersonal past.

In the bluish-yellow early-summer night, transilluminated by moonlight, an aura of everything-has-passed settled on Mrs. Szemző’s rooms.

It settled stubbornly on Gyöngyvér’s shoulders; with the insanely yellow reflected light it settled on the entire quarter of the city, sunk in a nightmare. And the solitary semitone was not strong enough to address or lend body to the enormous mass of sensations of things past.

She could not muster enough strength to break through.

She has a singing teacher who never but never lets her sing. She tortures her, nags her, sadistic woman; how can she break through. Keeps making her stop all the time, in the interest of expression separately squelches every single note in her. So how can she sing effortlessly and naturally, how can she give form to her notes. This female frazzles my nerves completely; I don’t believe a word she says anymore.

There was no room to move in the historical thicket of objects, and she wasn’t getting anywhere with that damn F sharp either.

Those two F sharps, my child, you must really work them out.

I am not your child.

What I wish with all my heart is for you to be more patient with yourself.

Please note, I am not anybody’s child.

I know well whose child I am not, and I am not the child of Aunt Margit Huber.

I’m the child of my whore mother, whom somebody knocked up on the fly, if you understand this kind of talk.

You are susceptible to hysteria, dear child, and the question is whether you’ll be able to overcome this inclination of yours. And there’s another big question too: with what approach might I be of help to you. Giving a lesson to oneself requires self-discipline, that’s for sure. Now calm down, and let’s take it from the top. Like an ordinary technician, think of it that way, I’m an ordinary technician who ought to find the source of this damn breakdown in communication.

Let’s try it staccato.

We must hear what you deign to do with these two F sharps, for they deserve a better fate.

Please don’t tell me that I deign to do something.

You should put every note individually in its proper place, Gyöngyvér, not in general, do not sing in general. Try it staccato.

It won’t kill you, don’t worry.

There, you see.

If you can’t manage to bring out that sound when you sing slowly like this, carefully separating each note from the rest, what will it be like, for heaven’s sake, at the proper tempo.

Don’t hurry, where are you rushing to, for the love of heaven, don’t smudge it so roughly, don’t smudge it like that.

It won’t be nice if the high note is strained.

You have days, dear child, when instead of singing you try cleverly to avoid the notes; you want to get away with not singing. I know you’ll be offended again, but again you’ve failed to sustain it.

I’ll gladly lend you my ears, I’ll rent them out to you, but you must do the singing. You want to get away from the notes. A singer, my pet, should not sing in general, even though one’s stage instinct might suggest it, to pretend and pretend some more instead of playing for real, but please, don’t go that route. You have your own voice, yet you want to sing by cribbing from others.

That turns into self-complacency or self-pity. That is not your best voice, Gyöngyvér, it still isn’t your very best. It’s as if you are forcing it. To be sure to have every note, first you must bring your body into the right position and together with your emotions, we’ve talked a lot about this and in great detail. All along the way, one beat in advance, you should know what you want to do next. And don’t forget that in German the letter ü is short, even if the tempo wants it longer.

Repeat after me, Glück.

Glück.

Gyöngyvér, please, shorter, shorter. You are happy, you understand, happy.

Glück.

Because of the tempo, you may double a vowel, but be careful, no strange sound between the two vowels. Please don’t get in the habit of that embarrassing spl-ee-ee-ee-ting of words. You’re singing about happiness, not cooing to a baby.

Of course others do that, but we don’t understand them. All you’re doing is imitating the weak points of others.

You’ve got enough of your own.

Glück, say it after me, one more time, and shine, make your voice glisten.

Not with your little mug, Gyöngyvér, with your eyes! Glitter and glow with your eyes, shine them out of your pretty little face.

You can indicate by miming what you’ll do in your great happiness, for all I care, the dramatic situation allows for it. But you, my dear, are doing it the other way around: you are demonstrating retroactively what you failed to deliver with your voice. You make faces, but I want to hear something about happiness.

As it is, it’s worthless, nothing, zero, nada. It’s as if you mixed up cause and effect.

We can’t mix apples and oranges either.

You can’t give me the visual instead of the acoustic.

And now I’d like to hear at last that you’ve put the notes in their proper place.

Glück, I want to hear this shorter, Gyöngyvér, shorter, and let your voice glisten.

Gyöngyvér Mózes, filled with doubts, kept hitting the F sharp while outside it was fast becoming light, and at the very same moment the tormented and humiliated Kristóf Demén, not so far from her, made good on his promise to himself.

He was trudging toward the Pest shore, not on the Margit Bridge but on the Árpád Bridge.

He did not pick this bridge just because it was closer and seemed to be the safest way to escape the raiding police.

The others, who did not manage to escape, were soon beaten with nightsticks, the blows falling wherever their bodies could be reached on their backs, heads, and arms raised in defense. He wasn’t sure that other police units might not be combing the interior of the island; he couldn’t flee that way. And if he had good luck, the incredible luck to slip through the dragnet, he still thought that on this bridge he had the best chance of not falling into a trap again.

It wasn’t advisable to meet other human beings in his condition.

The chances of this happening were greater on the Margit Bridge or Lipót Boulevard.

In another twenty minutes city traffic would slowly wind down, but given his condition he couldn’t have gotten on a streetcar in any case.

He picked this escape route because the surest way of throwing himself successfully into the depths would be from the Árpád Bridge. Before meeting anyone. He only had to hurdle the railing.

As if his entire life until now had been nothing but preparation for this lovely nightmare that, lo and behold, came to him while he was still awake.

Under the blows of nightsticks, several men fell or collapsed into the tarry pissoir; they screamed, but the police went on beating them, they cried and begged for mercy while the police yelled.

Headlights of a police assault van provided light through the open door.

Will he have the fortitude.

Now he can realize it; all his great hopes lay in this last, long-gestating plan whose every little detail had been worked out.

In the glimmer of dawn, which had not yet obliterated the deep grayness of the world, he was running headlong, all alone, on the bridge. His bodily contentment was panting along with him, deriding his sense of morality and disgracing his conscience. He carried his joy with him. He was fleeing from policemen who were not pursuing him. They probably hadn’t even noticed that someone had escaped or, if they had, they were glad to have one less faggot at the station.

He stopped for the first time on the bridge, and thought of those who had perished here before him in the icy current, but he suspected this sort of thinking was an infamy to be avoided; then he looked back at the island, but the thick foliage hid everything.

It was summer now, with all its living, powerful fragrance. The grove of young chestnut trees swallowed up the cries for help, or there never were any. The summer dawn was lovely and serene. The gas lamp shone passively through the branches. As if nothing had occurred in the night just passing, the first birds sang loftily. He was dragging himself, he could not actually run in his fine, pointed black shoes, which had gotten so wet in the puddles, and his socks made sucking sounds.

No cars, no streetcars, no one, no movement at all on the gray asphalt of the bridge.

Dawn’s first blush appeared in the sky over Angyalföld, at the edge of the clouds mixing with factory smoke. It became improbable, it turned into an improbability, that he had succeeded in escaping, that he had really managed to escape from the screams, the dull thuds of blows, the shouts and implorations, across the blinding light, and that he had not been taken away. That they had not reached him with their swishing nightsticks. Although the arc lights up here on the bridge were still on, the great sky with the birds was becoming lighter. Gulls were screeching lazily at one another, and swallows on the shore sent their brief shrill messages as they swiftly flew about. Yet he kept hearing the plopping and thumping of bodies being piled on top of each other, the falling of rapid blows; his conscience registered and properly sorted everything, he brought with him visual illustrations of arms poised to strike or raised in defense, melodies of futile begging, swearing, someone’s screaming entreaty, please, don’t hurt me, you shouldn’t hurt only me, comrade policeman, the sound of tearing clothes, the curses, the cracking of bones in upheld arms; in his own brain cells he salvaged and brought to light of day the sounds and sights of horror and reprisal, which couldn’t have been more contrary to reason or comprehension.

You just wait, you filthy fags, you’ll get it now.

In the unusual silence, he could hear the streaming, helpless plashing of water around the base of the bridge’s piers.

You wanted cock, all right then, you’ll get cock.

It was summer, an ordinary early-summer dawn with its cool mist.

He was dragging his injured leg.

The tight pants chafed the oozing wound; the shin smashed on the iron railing was burning and painful.

He feared that the rounded-up men would be taken away across this bridge and then they’d catch him too; he’d have no place to hide or chance to escape.

His black shirt and black pants, wet with other men’s urine and filthy with their sperm, stuck to his back, chest, bottom, and thighs; they clung to him, adhered to him like skin, white-hot with shame.

Only a few seconds before the police raid he had struggled to his feet from the stone floor, wet with water dripping from the cracked sink and the streams of urine that had missed their target, where, earlier, the men standing above him and intimately busy with one another had reached their satisfaction or had hastily abandoned him because of others’ stiff cocks; his body had been lying there, motionless, for a long time after its own gratification. He figured he would do it when he reached the geometrical center of the bridge’s span between the island and the Pest shore, where he’d have the least chance of getting stuck on part of the bridge while falling or of knocking against a pillar below.

That was his big plan.

He could see himself falling, but he didn’t want to see himself shattered or mangled, not that.

Before the police raid, his personal fate had given him time to stagger to the sink, which in the darkness he had guessed was behind the wide-open steel door of the pitch-black public urinal.

This open door turned out to be his great luck.

He figured that it wasn’t by chance they’d left the door open at night; they did it so they’d all walk into the trap.

He’d barely had time to slap some water on his face, just enough to wash the filth of others’ pleasure off his face, rinse it out of his mouth before going home, when the quiet night was shattered by the engine noise of the assault van, the screeching of its wheels and its spotlights; the policemen were already yelling.

To herd together so many shouting, whimpering men and then squeeze them into the open prison van waiting farther off can’t have been easy; if only because of the policemen’s quick, violent fury the job couldn’t be bloodless.

Huddled behind the open steel door, he was out of danger for a few seconds. But he thought that before doing away with himself, he should take off his clothes soiled by urine and other human secretions.

Should roll them up and make a bundle of them and his shoes, which later he could throw along with his shame into the depths before hurling there himself.

That the water should swallow it up, make it vanish at the bottom of its terrific current.

He would stand naked before his own death, with no way back, powerless to change his mind at the last moment.

He had nothing to change his mind about.

Ilona’s rice chicken crossed his mind, the leftovers waiting for him in the pot on the stove, nice and succulent, tasty with spices, unless Ágost had unexpectedly come home early, beaten him to it and eaten it right out of the pot. In this penultimate moment he was ready to develop a liking even for Ágost, whom he disdained because of his egocentric quirks, whom he could not bear, in fact, and who, with no consideration, would take for himself, and take away from Kristóf, every delicious morsel that Ilona put aside. Barely an arm’s length from his long-prepared death, he felt strongly the physical aversion that, given their shared family features, he experienced in his cousin’s company, the perplexing intimacy of familial aversion. On this night, however, Ágost had not come home unexpectedly early to eat his cousin’s supper but rather, lying on his stomach, one knee pulled almost to his chin, was sleeping peacefully and uncovered in the maid’s room of the seventh-floor flat.

At the moment before perishing, Kristóf wanted to understand Ágost’s crippling strangeness, to learn to love it as his own. But what he understood at most was that one is not alone even in aversion to one’s own body, because in family systems this trait too thrives in profusion.

He also remembered Ilona’s freckles and her pale little boy, whose fate would be no better than his had been. That’s what he thought about him. He felt sorry for the brooding, rebellious little boy and for his life to come. As if thinking that his own fate, which he was now leaving to these miserable survivors, might at least have someone in whom its cruelties would continue.

This child flesh will remain here, their common fate can rage as it pleases.

The idea that he might still have some of that rice chicken suddenly made him ravenous.

And another idea: that he would pass on his fate to the defenseless child, along with the leftovers of the rice chicken. Mainly, he was thinking about food because of the drop in blood sugar that comes with sexual gratification. The desire to stuff himself, gorge himself one last time. The way Ágost does; after each of his loud climaxes he gets up to wolf down something fast, eat jam out of the jar, be as disgusting as he is. If he were to stay alive, stay in this only life of his, the most dreaded thing would be his infernal climax, which the giant and his mustached assistant might somehow cajole out of his cool, insensitive body; he’d be an exemplar, a model to follow, yes, this is what you should strive for.

He should come back to them every night. Like two legendary heroes, outlaws, or highwaymen they had disappeared before the police arrived.

Which aroused his suspicion. Could they have been the ones who brought on the police to take care of the others — that’s what he thought, but he knew well that he could no longer live without them even if they were police agents.

He might even want them more if they were.

Only a few more seconds and he’ll be at the right spot and then, luckily, that scandalous thought — that nothing matters so long as they are willing to do it with him — will no longer live in him. Still, it was precisely this scandalous thought that made it seem that he was celebrating a victory over fate. After all, for the first time in his life he’d succeeded in attaining this scandalous bliss, and without getting caught or beaten up by the cops, avoiding the risk that his aunt would have to bail him out of one of the detention centers; he shuddered at the thought.

There is no punishment; there won’t be any. His last hour was becoming the best hour of his life; at least they could not humiliate him for it. His fate has no more time to invent and inflict new punishment. Death will not be a punishment for his innocent pleasure but, rather, a lavish present, a huge bonus, he told himself, and he did not fear it, not at all; he already loved it in advance, deeply desired it, desired nothing else. At least death knew how gravely fate had erred throughout his short life. He should have settled in another body because he was completely innocent, and he learned from his impending death that other people, when they were happy, were happy because of their damned offenses.

Or what sort of hope of happiness is it when the hope that men pursue treacherously abandons them, when they cannot give it up but it runs ahead, away from them, on swift feet. Thirst had parched his lips and the hollow of his mouth; nausea made painful sores in the corners of his mouth and chapped his lips.

It was uplifting — to be aware of what he had learned about himself and about other men for the first and last time in his life. And other men can just stay in this world with this knowledge if they want to.

He was taking with him the taste and smell of strange men’s lips, gums, teeth, saliva, and cocks; he cherished this, as he did his own imminent death, for which he had to take only a few more, possibly painful steps. He will take everything with him; he won’t share anything with anybody. And with the thought that he’d have nothing to relinquish in the new world, he wished that feeling would come back to his parched mouth, despite his nausea, yes, they should kiss it, thrust their muscular tongues into it, these other men, anybody. More than for the depth of the swirling water, more than for its surface made silky by the churned-up mud, he longed for the thick lips of the mustached man, the taste of his heavy sweat, the strange smells left by his spritzers, meat stew, and perpetual cigarettes. With his stinking mouth he should kiss the rest of his life to pieces, fuck him to smithereens. Gobble up every last bit of leftovers, wipe the juicy bottom of the pot with a piece of bread, chew clean every little bone and bite through every bit of gristle.

This somebody who temporarily was still himself was taking with him the stale odor of tar and urine in his pores, on his skin, on the fuzz in his nostrils, and on his wet clothes.

Only a few seconds are left, all he has to do is get to the middle of the bridge with this miserable creature. Nothing is more clearly known than this and never will be.

Joining these sensations was the silt-filled, all-pervasive smell of the water intermingled with the bitterness of smoke from nearby factories and, separately, the sweet breeze of jasmine.

On his short-cropped blond hair, a mixture of strangers’ sperm was drying.

And while she kept on trying, once, twice, even five times in one instant, because she didn’t want, just this once she really didn’t want to fudge it, she was really trying to put this fucking F sharp in its proper place as required by the sense and style of the phrase, treating it as objectively as Margit Huber, this Médike, demanded of her, and why shouldn’t she be able to treat it as a technician would, since after all she does have a brain in her head and knows I can hold back a little here and let go a bit there; still, defying all her good intentions, her shoulders trembled with suppressed tears.

Much pain and happiness intersected during this exceptional moment.

When Kristóf again broke into a run on the bridge, he was fleeing to safeguard the sweet and childish images of his own death from the images of Ilona’s rice chicken and innocent freckles.

Which would like to keep him here for his life and for his future.

He was the only one making a noise on the dully resonant sidewalk of the bridge with his running steps, and yet he acknowledged, with some delay, the sound of trotting coming close behind him. And he envied Ilona’s pale little boy, in advance, for his terrible fate. He was fully prepared to hurdle over the railing. Quick little taps like those made by a dog’s feet reached his consciousness first. The nails tapped more rapidly than he himself was running. His heart skipped a beat; the black dog was going to catch up with him, his black dog.

It had gotten free, broken out, or the night watchman must have heard its echoing, persistent barking. And now the dog was coming after him on the bridge so he would have to continue to live his life for its sake, for a dog.

No, this was too much.

He had to figure out something; he could not run any faster.

As if he could not decide where he was in time and space, what had happened to him earlier or later.

Good Lord, she sighed, and I reproached this sweet dear man, telling him he was working inside me like a stupid little technician.

Without a soul.

Cheeky person that I am.

It was Margit Huber again, speaking out of me.

She was surprised in any case by her delayed realization that this Médike had managed to get inside her and reach every part of her with her words so insidiously meted out.

What the hell was I talking about, that he was a technician, what a dumb thing to say.

Next thing I know she’ll decide what I should tell my lover; that’s all I need.

I can’t let that happen.

As if she had suddenly realized the intoxicating beauty and horror of the osmosis, the exchange of personality, the symbiosis that occurs between people.

This woman had moved inside her with her entire being, not only her stupid singing lessons; she had wormed her way into Gyöngyvér’s every sentence and every thought. In the end she’ll be telling me what I should say to whom in every situation. As if Médike, with her relentless smile, had expropriated Gyöngyvér for herself. Let the devil be happy with her, not me, let the devil shine and glitter, what I need is a man, not her artistic glittering. Or maybe Gyöngyvér had expropriated Médike’s being along with her smile, I’ve robbed her of her smile, though she still didn’t understand how a permanent smile like that worked, the one she had stolen. Such an illuminating, multifaceted smile — which displayed myriad colors and levels of emotional intensity, which flickered, wavered, and fluttered on Margit Hubert’s lips as she taught, and with which she compelled no one to do anything — was not calculated into Gyöngyvér Mózes’s dark and difficult life, only, at most, into her tuition. Not enough that I’m paying for my lessons, I’m supposed to be happy too. Let your damn mother be happy, that Swabian. Gyöngyvér was amazed, where does this Médike get the strength for her constant smiles. And as she imitated Médike, Gyöngyvér began to comprehend that the airily sustained smile indeed contained something cool, treacherous, and obsessively persistent that would prove indispensable to singing and that she could not do without.

And she hated Margit Huber for this.

These people allow themselves to do even this.

Sometimes, while talking to herself, she addressed Margit Huber’s smile as if it were not a single characteristic of a single person but the cause of her having to wage war simultaneously against the collective experience of several persons.

If something slipped out all right, if she succeeded with one of her phrases and Margit Huber praised her, beaming, yes, that’s it, Gyöngyvér, that’s how you should do it, this is what we’ve been waiting for, then of course she instantly felt her heart beat faster and she adored her teacher.

She was grateful to her for her earlier wickedness.

Médike was redeemed and Gyöngyvér adored her.

She wanted to get rid of this painful, newly acquired habit of hers, the relentless full-mouthed smiling when speaking or singing. The moment she eked out a good result from her many fiascos, she wanted to thrust Médike from her and quickly forget everything she had learned from her. What has this Médike accomplished in life with all her great knowledge, nothing. If she’d been able to make something of herself, she wouldn’t be teaching Gyöngyvér for fifty-seven forints an hour, she’d be singing. Others shouldn’t see who it was who had taught her to make her voice glow like that. This is a shameful betrayal. And though it would be painful to betray Médike immediately because, despite all her hatred, Gyöngyvér actually thought she loved her, I love her, the temptation for a quick all-out betrayal was greater.

And from whom can a natural talent really learn anything; from nobody.

She couldn’t have real pangs of conscience about the betrayal.

In Médike, she discovered a teacher’s unconditional humility toward her profession and her pupil. She’s a dumb slut. Which in Gyöngyvér’s language meant that in the soul of this elusive and merciless female was a spot where she’d left herself exposed. This entire teaching strategy was an impersonal passion that she too had experienced with the children in the kindergarten and throughout her whole singing history, and no less profoundly. She knew perfectly well that without children she too was vulnerable. Her own body gave her the insight into the other person’s passion for teaching; and she saw how vulnerable it had made her too.

If it was possible, she wanted to exploit her even more.

She can’t do without her.

The sheer thought that she would wring the last drop of knowledge from the old hag filled her with gratitude; she’d wring every bit of knowledge out of her. Then she’d toss her aside like a dirty dishrag.

Passions cannot be tamed without a cool smile; she must make every sacrifice for this knowledge. The woman must be squeezed like a lemon. So that Gyöngyvér could acquire a little protection, this little common secret of theirs, a bit of this cunning little advantage.

Even then, she won’t have as many fine expensive things as these people do who are always inheriting things from other people or family members.

It was as if she were learning not to sing but to smile superciliously and cheerfully in a hostilely indifferent universe.

Why should I be the one who never inherits anything from anybody. Well, I shall take things for myself, I’ll rob them and I’ll smash everything.

But out loud she couldn’t even say how grateful she would be to Médike; she could say nothing out loud. Because there was no sentiment in the world that this old bitch didn’t reject. And let Gyöngyvér drown in her own sentimentality.

Let’s not become personal, Gyöngyvér, please. We’re busy with something else now. We do not put our personal feelings on display, we look upon them as the object of our labors.

When will you be able to pay the overdue tuition, if I may ask.

And Gyöngyvér should be drowning in her love and gratitude, since she was not allowed to be free of these feelings. Just once, though, she’d like to tell the merciless bitch that she feels her gratitude in her loins. It hurts my stomach, in my cunt I feel my gratitude, you old idiot, you hag, in my twat, you understand.

How would this Médike know how one should sing onstage if she has never actually taken a cunt into her mouth.

Let me teach you, then, you old bitch.

Cunt.

Say after me.

Sopranos, of course, can throw hysterical fits for you, making their fine town houses resonate.

Oh, she understood the old bitch, she did indeed, very well.

As a contralto, Gyöngyvér, one should know one’s place in the hierarchy of the art of singing.

If only the old idiot would make an exception with someone, with me, for example, with me. She should make me her general heir. Anyway, she hasn’t got anyone. Mrs. Szemző doesn’t either; these women have no one and still I won’t be inheriting anything from them. Why doesn’t Médike understand her: that she loves her so much for her knowledge; that she wants her.

In my pain and embarrassment I’ll say to you out loud, I want you.

Why doesn’t she love me, what would it take for her to make an exception just once; after all, her drawers are full of jewelry and her apartment’s got nothing but expensive paintings and carpets; what more does she want, why isn’t she more tender with me.

She would like to be a male dog; then Médike would let her climb on top of her.

She couldn’t have many students who respect her this much.

At most, she could call her Médike, and the wicked witch couldn’t object to that. Those pampered ladies, those posh women friends of hers, they called her Médike.

Well, I’ll give you plenty of Médike, to have your fill.

Out of pride, Médike had to pretend not to have grasped how much Gyöngyvér adored and disdained her whenever she called her Médike.

I’d kill myself if I had huge, wrinkled, freckled breasts like hers. Médike was one mean-spirited bitch and because of her Gyöngyvér had to suffer so much. I shouldn’t have breasts larger than a boy’s. She had paid a lot to be able to suffer from Médike, true, but she also hadn’t learned so much from anyone as she had from this dear woman. A slut of a Swabian woman like this could be so damn stingy and with her an hour was only fifty minutes. And even after the lesson one couldn’t chat with her for free, oh no. For five minutes of yakking she charged a whole hour, and on top of that she pretended not to understand your indignation.

Gyöngyvér would have liked to sink a good long knife into her for such pettiness.

Or, good Lord, to fall on the harridan with her bare hands.

Good Lord, imagine that once upon a time a man must have loved this ugly woman.

And properly strangle her.

When she could no longer listen to her remarks, neutralized by her smile, that this was not to be sung like that, nor that like this.

In full voice, Gyöngyvér, not loud.

Watch the descent.

As if you were squeezing it.

It was intolerable that everything was supposed to be done differently from the way she was doing it or hearing it. That her feelings should be discounted. And if she had a shot of something to help her get through an hour’s worth of anxiety, even smile back at her teacher and feel just a little better about things, Médike had the nerve to tell her she could smell it on her breath.

If you’ve had a drink, Gyöngyvér, don’t come to the lesson. Please, do not let this turn into an inveteracy.

Inveteracy. That’s the sort of thing she says. Neither her colleague at the kindergarten nor Ilona Bondor knows this word.

She chewed some coffee beans after her drink, that’s how she tricked Médike.

It can’t be that in one person everything works the wrong way.

At least a good cognac before the lesson, she should have at least that. All right, maybe two.

How could she remember so many things at once. The old crone bleats so much because she wants me to take more lessons. The old hag could fill all her waking hours with lessons. How could a person satisfy so many demands. You don’t have to tell me. Yet she couldn’t even find an extra free hour for you to make up a missed lesson.

I can’t learn three foreign languages simultaneously. She can’t shove every stupidity down my throat.

It did not seem reasonable to put up with so much shame and humiliation and to pay so much for it.

But she did not give up, she kept hitting that fucking F sharp on Mrs. Szemző’s piano, following its sound with her voice.

In the meantime, she was locked up in the chicken coop.

When did anyone lock up Médike in a chicken coop, or Irmuska and the famous Mária Szapáry and the rest of the grand ladies, when. Never. They gave her nothing to eat, she drank out of the trough, she had to drink out of the cattle trough.

Out of what else.

When had these women ever suffered as much as she had, and she couldn’t have known that this was mental suffering because she hadn’t learned the appropriate words from them. In the morning they gave her a turnip to chew on. She’d never tell anyone that she had picked a live worm out of one and eaten it. How could she have known there would be punishment for that too.

She did not understand what sins a little girl like that could have committed, or what sin was. And she did not know what a little girl or little boy was because they kept her as if she’d been a dumb animal, and also punished her for being one.

She drank the chickens’ water.

She was capable of doing it, that useless thing.

She looked for her uselessness everywhere, tried secretly to feel it on herself, where it might have entered her, and to figure out what made other children so useful.

And they always shoved her back here, hungry and thirsty, and she felt that anybody could put her to shame, degrade and humiliate her.

She could never be free of this. The only reason she could endure the long hours, the whole nights, in the chicken coop was that she didn’t know she might die or that she had been born; how could she have known. How could she have known any of the things other children knew. The bolt clicked again, they locked the chicken-coop door from the outside, and this was her punishment for drinking from the trough again.

Ain’t yah a disgustin’ li’l animal drinkin’ the water o’ them cows. What am I wastin’ time teachin’ yah what to do, an’ aks fur water when yah thirst. Didn’ I gi’ yah turnip. I’ll leave yah here all night, but if yah budge, the ugly fox come take yah away an’ bite clear across yer throat.

From the depth of that night, there glimmered in Gyöngyvér’s brain a realization about her first foster mother. She could not remember her face, only her meaty arms tanned dark by the sun, her approaching heavy steps, and that strange large man and what he had done, in the midst of intimate and ominous sounds, to this larger-than-life woman who now seemed to have been the Médike of her old life.

That is why she is so terrified of her, or of Médike, and of men in general.

These figures metamorphosed into one another; she could not be rid of them.

That is why she can’t learn from Médike what she should, not because of the cognac.

Paying her in vain.

She will kill her.

She’d like to take my entire salary.

These two very different things, her unconsciously committed sins and her sheer existence, were inauspiciously coming together. This was not something she thought; she actually witnessed it. She saw the fox from very close up; in her life, not in a fairy tale, the fox and the rat came in the night and kept chewing and pushing at the coop’s boards until they got to a hen or rooster and they took away the little girl too. That was actually good, taking her away, because then there’d be quiet at last; or maybe it was inside her that something was forever rent asunder, something that could not be mended in her lifetime and it is only her that God punishes like this so cruelly.

The fox did come.

To pick at the bolt from inside wasn’t easy, but she kept at it for a long time and finally got it to move and managed to escape. She threw the bolt into the nettles. So they couldn’t lock the coop door on her again. But they did, they also beat her around the head and locked her up using something other than the bolt, seeing how incorrigible and useless she was.

Not only did she escape, she also drank the chickens’ water, the mean thing.

She’d better talk or answer me before I knock her dead.

With what remained of her senses she understood that the world order was different for other people; they wash up and go to church. She didn’t understand why they stuffed soap in her mouth when she did not know how she should have answered, or what her sin meant to her and why she was so filthy and smelly, and why she had scratched her fleabites again until they were bloody.

Mrs. Bizsók did not do things like this to her but she slapped her face and spanked her bottom mercilessly.

Though she won’t forgive her for beating her with a vine pole.

Don’t yah fret, nobody’s gonna look for yah if I beat yah to death.

She did not lash out at the others whom she wanted to understand, to win over, love or bribe to compensate for the heat of the chicken coop, the constantly fidgeting hens, and the scratched fleabites. She wanted them to accept her, take her in; she’d show them that she too could be useful or that at least she wasn’t useless. This was the reason she paid so much money to Médike. Fifty-seven forints for an hour that was only fifty minutes.

They should not do this to her.

She threw up; in her alarm, she vomited on her little dress when they were taking her to church, but how could they take her wearing something she’d thrown up on.

In the coop, it was also hard for her to learn how to avoid the rooster.

She had the runs because of her fear; they tethered her to a tree because she soiled everything in the summer kitchen.

Or to stick a knife in them, that long-bladed knife her foster mother pulled out from behind the saltbox to slit the throats of the geese and let them thrash between her legs until they bled to death, down to the last drop.

She was quick to flare against those she could not strangle with her hands.

She desperately envied them for their always different lives, none of which would ever be hers.

Not to turn around or look back.

At first he only quickened his steps, trying not to limp so much, but the dog’s tapping feet followed him even faster.

He did not want to take the starving cur under his wing now that he was so defenseless himself.

Only not to turn around.

Then, as if hit by lightning, her brain was shot through with an electric discharge.

Whereupon her hearing seemed to open onto her voice, and the voice, small and miserable because of all the secret crying and infinite joy of having possessed that beautiful man, now breaks free, is liberated, and this time she is the one chaining someone to herself. Who is not right for her. Although she had been with a man like that before, this is not the first time she has done it with them, Jews. If he is a Jew — he says he isn’t. And she felt the joy because of this incredible exhaustion too, and her elemental fear of him, being so exhausted because of her. All right, let him be half a Jew, what do I care, it’s all the same to me. Anyone can wear you out in three days, that’s for sure. Why should I be scared of things that are good for me. Because of him, she won’t be able to go to work today, yes, because of him. And she trembled because of her constant anxiety about having the money to pay Médike. I should be ashamed of what he did to me, ashamed that with me anybody can do anything; he can make my knees shake and my soul tremble at the same time. My head will explode, because I’m such a miserable creature, God put me down at the wrong place, Providence slipped me into the wrong body and there isn’t a person in the world who can help me.

Everybody gets my goat and I have to be afraid of women too.

Yet she had never before experienced such profound sexual contentment with a man.

It was more than ever before; simultaneously, she moved with him in various deep layers and on high plateaus, simultaneously.

Well, goddamn it, it’s not all the same to me.

It was new and shocking, just thinking about it was enough to make her brain cells come, but she was just as enthusiastic about that old saying she had heard in Tiszavésztő, that humans are mortal and licentious. She must have picked it up during a Bible lesson, or maybe it was from a familiar psalm, but which one.

Then it must be something by Bach. She vainly searched her mind for the fucking psalm. So she could quietly console herself with it in the endless city night.

Which made her realize for the first time in her life — she in fact saw — what a wide ditch yawned between physical and mental gratification.

If this was so, then all these years she’d been getting fucked in vain.

Only for things to be a little better.

I’ve been getting myself screwed for nothing; with their puny cocks, these wretches could give neither of those gratifications. If they had the cock for it, they lacked the necessary rhythm. What’s to be done if, in her case, one ability does not exist without the other. They can reach neither her body nor her soul. They could never get it up enough to screw her properly or, who knows what and why, something was always off. They stayed too far away or pushed themselves too close and left her no room to feel, but feel what. Because of her mortality and licentiousness, then, she had thrown away her soul’s opportunities. She’s been wandering soullessly in this earthly existence, but this too is but a psalm.

Because this one too will be only a dumb little technician in her life; they try hard, they pant, they hope to make every effort, which is why they shove, push, chew, and lick so desperately and so fast.

The moment they stop, their things droop; men become miserable because of me.

With his beautiful body, he works very nicely for me though he’s completely soulless toward me, as I am to him. I don’t love him, that’s the truth, I just needed to chalk up one of these well-educated men. She saw her fate before her; the terrible ditch opened up like this, like a wound. To this day, she knew exactly where the ditch ran between the reapers. Only the big boys could jump across it, in the spring, when the ice began to melt and the ditch filled with water. She couldn’t jump across it, but she thought nothing of getting into a fight with them. You weren’t careful with your clothes, were you, you snot-nose, you little shit, you useless thing, you, who will buy you clothes now, you barren creature. From the very beginning she had to give up things because she not only had been born a girl but was a foundling. Children can jump that far only if they get their milk every morning and without the sweet cream taken off the top beforehand, and if they also get potato noodles. She understood that the Bizsók boys had to have the cream so that their noodles would grow better, but who decided that she shouldn’t be a boy but a foundling, this she did not understand. Mrs. Bizsók made the decision. She understood that girls did not have to grow as much as boys because girls didn’t have noodles between their legs. Mrs. Bizsók beat her soundly when she got her dress wet in the ditch. She’d done something wrong, spoiled something again. But Mrs. Bizsók always had some cream, so why didn’t she have one between her legs, and why wasn’t she more understanding toward her. You knew I forbade you to jump across, but you went ahead and tried just the same. I always ruin things because I don’t understand what I have to give up. A foundling should behave herself, lie low. You can’t have anything to demand of us, not even before the law, little girl. And a female child should be especially obedient. You should be glad I’m teaching you, you useless thing, you. Who will slap your face, you little shit, or spank your butt if not your foster mother. And she always talks back to me, this state orphan here.

She barely sticks out of the ground and she’s already working her jaw.

We barely get anything to raise you on, you hear me.

A father only has to beat his son, can’t your tiny little brain remember even this much. You’d like your foster father slapping your ass, wouldn’t you.

I’d let him have it for that, I would.

She’d like that, yes, she would.

It’s always her impatience and her demands that ruin her life. She’ll fuck things up with this lovely, ravishing man too, just as she fucked it up with the old Jew, which is why she hasn’t inherited anything, but what the hell am I talking about, I can’t believe the things my mind can dredge up. At least his feet don’t stink. You’re safe with these people, you can even lick their asses. He not only shits but properly washes it for himself. And he also knows what is where in the other person’s body, he knows what he’s supposed to lick patiently, for a long time, oh, so delicious, what to keep softly sucking or what to stab with just the right force.

And if she loses him, it would be just as it was with Bizsók. Or with Médike, from whom she could really learn, finally, where to look for what in her own system.

Her dumb adoration and thirst for revenge scare them away.

She must be on her guard.

This time — because of the hungry hatred she felt for them, her will to take everything and learn everything from them, feel contempt for them, be better than they and better than everybody — the F sharp found its right place.

More correctly, several necessary things found their proper places all at once, and because of that she could at least put the note in its right place. If not her entire life, retroactively and in anticipation. She was busy contemplating her hatred — clearer than daylight — and remembering Médike’s prediction that if and when she ever put the note in its right place she, Gyöngyvér herself, would hear it.

She would feel it as though she had acquired an entirely different system of hearing.

The Holy Spirit or some such thing must have seized her.

You’ll be standing next to yourself, listening to your singing.

To hear what you’ll be hearing then, you won’t need your ears, my dear.

Or perhaps sweet Médike lent her own hearing to her.

A feeling of triumph will be swelling in your body.

In her joy, she felt like pissing on Mrs. Szemző’s old piano stool.

It was only her dumb urge to pee that put the note in its place. Of course, in this miserable maid’s room, where she could hole up thanks to the generosity of these grand ladies, she’d caught another cold. Sweet Médike would be glad to predict everything for her. Now she can suffer again for weeks with her bladder infection and ovaritis; she’ll be bleeding and then she’ll have to send away even this rotten pretty boy too.

Experiencing the convergence of so many different things enthralled and moved her so much that she propped her arms on the keyboard and then lowered on them her migraine-tortured pretty little head. She continued with her infinite self-pity, lamenting that she had been dealt such a cruel singing teacher who was nevertheless the best voice coach in the city. That she pays fifty-seven forints per hour. Every month she has to give half her salary to this woman; she can’t buy herself a damn thing, every one of her best pieces she has had to charm off somebody. How could she be so hapless, such a shiftless, hopeless case who can’t exploit her own talents, such a useless mortal. Doomed to suck cocks as babies do tits, but without finding a man who at night would give her what’s rightfully hers and love her tenderly.

There is no such man and never will be, but at least she knows where to put this shitty little F sharp.

And not even these people can take this away from her anymore.

In the meantime she’s making ungodly noises with her helpless limbs on the superannuated concert piano.

What makes you think that such a pampered pretty boy would give you yours, of all men, such a Lothario. Don’t hold your breath, the young gentleman looks only for his own pleasure in you.

Why must we women be such dumb whores.

Why should I get him a blanket. Why should I steal a nice warm blanket from Mrs. Szemző’s closet for him.

Let these pretty boys look to the Almighty of their decrepit old mothers, why don’t they go lick and suck Him.

Oh, my good Lord, I shouldn’t be thinking of Him like this.

I’ll slap your mouth, little girl.

Only don’t turn around; and while he prayed like this, which made him shudder, he began to run. But on the bridge there was no place to run to and running made his injured shin throb terribly.

The moment he stopped to chase away the dog panting at his ankle, to beat him away cruelly, mercilessly, however he could, no stray dog like that should follow him, and to do this he had to turn around, he felt the dog’s feet on his shoulders and a warm wet tongue on his face.

From then on Kristóf wore on his face the stamp, as it were, of the dog’s wide, warm tongue. Although not everyone could see that he constantly rebelled against his own goodness with all his might and wanted to hear nothing about any kind of mercy or compassion.

He staggered, yelled, and shoved the dog off.

In an instant disgust and nausea covered his entire body with spots and pimples, and he swallowed helplessly.

Enchanting, you’ve done it magnificently, my dear Gyöngyvér. Sie haben es geschafft, geschafft. I worry only about your impatience and hysterics. But this, das hätte ich nicht geglaubt, nicht gedacht. Don’t become overconfident.

And then I fuck it all up again by thinking all these lousy, obscene things about this gorgeous and darling man.

Who doesn’t shit on her.

You’ve done it wonderfully, but let’s look at it a bit closer. Did it happen by chance.

Nobody is going to tell me what to do. Why shouldn’t I be overconfident.

First, I’ll give you a few F sharps, listen, Gyöngyvér, but I want the same thing in the right tempo and with the text.

Áperté, we’ll see whether you really found it this time.

Shit on you, Médike.

I think you can do it without all that nodding. Don’t keep nodding so much with the text, just sing, sing, damn it.

Don’t open your mouth so wide. Gaping like that won’t help you one bit.

Stimme, how many times do I have to tell you, Stimme.

I don’t want to see you making grimaces.

Let’s take it again from the top.

I really couldn’t care less what you’re saying, I shit on all of you.

I shit on the listless cocks of all those jokers.

I want to hear your voice, my dear, not see your mimicry. Your little-girlish hatefulness doesn’t interest me at all. You can’t conjure voice out of mimicry, and hysterics can’t help you.

Please don’t open your mouth so wide, it’s ugly and unnecessary.

At the memory of this note, Gyöngyvér Mózes pricked up her ears, raised her head, wiped her tears, and listened into the mute night.

Was she hearing the noise of the elevator rising in the glass tube of the stairwell, which echoed the slightest little noise. She heard thuds, the pounding of running feet, booted and coming closer, shouts and then rattling, as when a window is smashed with a rifle butt.

She looked around for a hiding place.

That night of the second day of Christmas when a group of Arrow Cross thugs broke into this building and rousted everybody just as they found them out to the snow-covered street, Mrs. Szemző and her two sons had been long gone from their apartment. Alajos Madzar had placed very few objects in any given space, and with Mrs. Szemző he had a very easy time when it came to minimizing the need for objects. He put very simple, etched-glass-covered sconces with matte chromium-plated armatures on the rustically splattered walls. And in that space Gyöngyvér Mózes heard many notes she could not possibly have heard.

Perhaps her heart pounded so loudly in fear.

Somebody was shouting in the stairwell, imploring others that if they knew any kind of god, if you have any soul in you, you would not do this.

Do this, it echoed.

At least have mercy on my elderly mother.

My elderly mother, derly mother, mother, other, it echoed.

Then everything fell silent in the stairwell.

If it had been Mrs. Szemző coming up in the elevator, Gyöngyvér would have left the piano and quickly returned via the bathroom to the maid’s room, which Madzar had turned into an office for Mrs. Szemző’s assistant.

It would not have been the first time for her.

No, they would have no mercy.

And it was as if she heard a single piercing scream, then again a rattling and a crash. In her many sublet situations, she had learned how to listen to and hear things above a general noise, sneak and scurry through hallways and corridors, take furtive bites out of other people’s food, use strangers’ belongings silently and unnoticed. Towels, the landlady’s cotton, a few tea leaves, soup powder, break off a piece of bread, slip a couple of cigarettes out of a pack, take a swig out of the milk bottle. Leave no traces.

Had she known she was listening to the past, she would have turned to stone.

Not to make the floor creak.

But it was not Mrs. Szemző now, and Gyöngyvér did not move from the piano stool.

Mrs. Szemző said, Gyöngyvér, listen to me, you should probably sing Monteverdi, the sweet, seductive, and terrible Gorgone, for example, yes, and she asked if Gyöngyvér knew that role.

How in the name of cunt could she know everything. Why was Mrs. Szemző asking her such dumb things.

Sure, Irmuska believes they were playing Monteverdi for me in the chicken coop, right.

Madzar had carefully worked out who was to go where in the psychoanalytic clinic because Mrs. Szemző’s patients should theoretically not ever meet even in this unpleasantly echoing but otherwise most attractive stairwell. At least that was the demand, which Madzar kept well in mind: that patients should not encounter each other. But the pounding increased as they approached from floor to floor, step by step, with their rifle butts knocking on the apartments’ thick oak doors.

If you listen for the inner world of your voice, Gyöngyvér, you will turn to stone, that’s how strong the primal force is in it, and the horror. Your voice cannot be loved, Gyöngyvér, don’t ever expect that, but you will be idolized, your voice is einmalig, I can tell you that much, einmalig.

Don’t mind me saying this to you, you must make use of your terrible thirst for revenge rather than being ashamed of it, don’t be afraid, if things turn out well you’ll be paid a bundle for your vengefulness.

It’s best for me, Mrs. Szemző explained to the architect at the time, if my patients remain ignorant of one another.

There are nights, however, when the walls of Budapest apartments reradiate the sounds they once absorbed.

The architect questioned the woman in detail, tried to follow her. Based on what he had heard, he figured out where her patients could wait for a few moments to avoid unexpected confusion.

Gyöngyvér could not have known anything of this, of course, which is why she did not believe her ears. That night, the Arrow Cross thugs led by an eager theology student named Mayer threw every piece of furniture out of the apartment windows and, so that Jews in hiding could never use any of the other apartments either, they turned on all the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom. The water rose for a while and then spilled over the threshold and began streaming down the stairs, at first only at the sides, and during the next days it froze, getting thicker and thicker.

With the double-edged characteristic of visibility and concealment in mind, the architect decided that a folding screen should be put here, or something reminiscent of a folding screen. The moment a person entered the clinic, she or he had to be reassured that one could find refuge if the need arose in this bright space. He placed the screen where the black concert piano stood now in the hallway. He also arranged for more seating than one might expect in this space, using only the chairs and armchairs he built himself.

He asked Mrs. Szemző to please observe which seating accommodation each patient chose.

These objects must stand on their own in the space, he explained, and Mrs. Szemző had to concentrate hard to understand him.

As if they each had an individual personality and, believe me, they will. I don’t try to make my objects beautiful, but they should be independent, with a strength that is uniquely characteristic. One of your patients might sit only on this chair, while another would prefer the armchair.

That’s my observation: different chairs, different human types.

Come on, my dear architect, don’t irritate me with talk of human types and my patients. You know very well, and I’ve explained it several times, for me there’s no such thing, for me these things do not exist.

It’s a good thing you haven’t started in on theories of racial purity.

There are no human types. At most, people’s socializations differ. Or there are problems in their social interactions that make them behave oddly, but that doesn’t make them sick. Both of us should intervene with a person’s systems of interaction. Believe me, we are traffic police, nothing more. I cannot cure anyone. But sometimes a single inspired suggestion is enough to change the inner conditions of mental functioning and for the change to have an impact on the historically altered surroundings.

At least in theory.

Madzar had to focus hard to follow the woman’s words. He also laughed at her a bit, making his own analysis a little easier.

Well, now, don’t be so afraid of me, he said, laughing at both the woman and himself, in theory I’ve understood and noted everything, but I can’t say your concepts are finding their way easily into what I say.

Or into my mind, of course. That’s true.

I only take my patients on a journey of discovery. Your space and the objects in it should give them similar impulses, and you can leave the words to the patients.

Mrs. Szemző’s strictness made Madzar chuckle. He recognized himself in her asceticism adopted in the interest of utopian ideals, and this irritated him, yet she remained a woman, and that also irritated him.

We won’t get anywhere with ancient concepts such as ill patient and mental illness, symptoms and human types. You can’t work against me so obviously, or if you do we might as well say good-bye to our shared ideas.

Stop, please, hold it. Madzar was laughing.

Don’t go so far. Sometimes one assigns certain borders involuntarily, but I take it back, I beg your pardon, I take it back and join you in declaring that there are no limits.

Between ill-being and well-being there really isn’t a border or bright line, my dear architect, no matter how often you joke about it.

But why would I be joking.

Even the classical scientists admitted that at most we can speak only of degrees. It’s a nice romantic idea that there are borders between people or even within a single human being. An individual has permanent traits, yes, but the essence of humans is easily permeable, and the traits themselves are malleable, showing different faces in different situations, which means that they offer us different inclinations. What else would make people so accommodating. I willingly admit that this lack of borders or limitations is very difficult to grasp or follow linguistically. Linguistically we are always pitting something against something else. If I say black, you add the thought of white but not the many hues of gray, one more beautiful than the other. If you say madness or speak of mental illness and its opposite, then you also have the murderous commonplace, the stereotype, the destructive linguistic convention, and you don’t even notice that you’ve passed off a culturally well-prepared sentence on others and yourself. Using that concept separates you from what is archaically common to us all, which none of us can escape. Using stereotypes and conventions, you gloss over the collective traits of individual humans. I hope you’ll forgive me for accusing you of such common crimes.

Even in a jungle, you can’t put down two stakes and declare that the area from here belongs to this one, from there to that one, because after the next rain new growth will cover everything.

Of course, you’re not alone with this mistaken notion.

And don’t forget, either, that it’s not in the negative but in the positive sense that no border exists between illness and well-being.

I can only guess what you mean.

I just want to reassure you that you don’t have to be either defensive or offensive when you think that way; after all, the absence of illness is health.

Now I really don’t understand you.

If I remember correctly you’ve already read Tonio Kröger.*

I can’t say it was easy.

Then you must know exactly what I mean.

They both had a hearty laugh at this.

For Gyöngyvér at this strange moment the physical mission of her naked, shuddering body became evident.

She does not have to escape via the bathroom, not yet, because this is not yet Mrs. Szemző, this is not the elevator. She hears shouting, but in reality there is dead silence on the street, in the stairwell, everywhere. The sounds she hears are unfamiliar; therefore they do not exist. I am so tired I’m hallucinating. And she reassures herself with this word, though it’s the very one that should alarm her, given what it describes. She did not understand where Mrs. Szemző tarried so late. At the crack of dawn, what could she be doing with her friends. Somebody should report her to the police, that would put an end to her staying out so late, and Gyöngyvér’s apartment problem would be instantly solved. But no matter how frightened she was or how many accusations and hateful statements she was making, she thought she should tempt again that miserable little F sharp. Now she knows where to put it. During the singing lesson it had happened by chance, rotten little Médike was right again, because she knows everything ahead of time, but this time, in the hallway, Gyöngyvér deliberately raised it to its proper place.

She had lifted it out of her violent hatred.

I am a sounding board, she thought triumphantly, and adored her taut, naked body in its shuddering skin. I bring the sounds of hatred with me, she thought triumphantly.

And the living souls of destroyed objects found their voice in her.

As if she were saying, I am not a person, not a mere structure, I wait in vain for live people to address me or make me speak first.

Her entire miserable childhood had been spent in not being able to speak. At the sight of people, fear and astonishment kept words stuck inside her. I must be the one to address this depressing space.

Madzar regarded furniture, especially chairs, as being like statues. He followed Rietveld,* who said that when a person is about to lower himself into a chair, the dramatic connection between his corporeal sensations and the place he takes up in space becomes clear. Because Madzar had thought a lot about this, Mrs. Szemző’s explanations and objections excited him. Indeed, a chair must grasp the dramatic relationship positively. This is why he was revolted by Tonio Kröger’s cataclysmic decadence, though he saw that Mrs. Szemző positively enjoyed his revulsion, which is why she had insisted he read it. He must first accept that he found decadence repellent before he could see it objectively, and only then would he understand it. Yet she always provoked a smile, no matter how many interesting things she told him about decadence, because she remained a woman he was attracted to, or could not be not attracted to, which raised them to the level at which visceral forces are at work.

As if they should have a fuck simply to understand something much more essential and basic.

In Mrs. Szemző’s eyes he must represent something strong, headstrong, and primeval compared to the timid, probably impotent Tonio Kröger. In her imagination he was the embodiment of archaic man — he tried to follow Mrs. Szemző’s thinking — which I’m not, he thought, and never was. She needs a weakling like Tonio Kröger, but she lives with a brutal character like Szemző. He was flattered that in Mrs. Szemző’s eyes he differed so greatly from whining Tonio Kröger and perhaps from her husband too. It would have been better to resemble brutal Mr. Szemző than Tonio Kröger. A chair cannot give in to nostalgia, to a catastrophe or to the small tragedies of personal life, not even to pleasant sorrow, like Tonio Kröger, whose physical fits of madness never ruffled him because he did not give in to them; a chair can’t put on airs. Madzar knew almost everything there was to know about what a chair should have; he was sensitive to objectification. And in the perspective of this utopian knowledge, he considered it imperative to be repelled by German decadence. And, no less, by Mrs. Szemző’s Jewish decadence. And not only did he read Thomas Mann with great aversion but it was also very difficult for him to listen to compositions by Wagner, Mahler, or Richard Strauss all the way through to the end; they nauseated him.

Years earlier, when studying in Weimar, the chair had become Madzar’s specialty, and if he ever was dissatisfied with his work, he never doubted his ability to deal with matter, any material, or his perfect sense of space. He had problems with his constitutional love of comfort and his archaic slowness, though, which is why he well understood what the Jewess from Budapest was talking about or had in mind. He could not free himself from the rhythm of the surroundings he came from. He acknowledged this, but dreaded awareness of it as he would a court sentence.

He was always lugging Mohács around with him.

At best he should try to find the key to his slowness and lagging; he realized that being a slow laggard might have advantages in a foreign setting, but to benefit he had to enjoy the perennial loser in himself. To learn to love Mohács’s destructive decadence. But he felt mainly indifference toward himself, and the same toward the abandoned city. He could not learn to love a place within himself where his last panic-stricken compatriot had been lost centuries before. He could not love the river’s wild maelstroms and great floods, which swallowed and carried away any person just as they would a helpless object. Although, on this last, perhaps very last summer in Mohács, despite the mental anguish and irritating technical dissatisfaction he had managed to deal very economically with historical and personal time, as well as with asceticism and decadence.

He had to create fifteen pieces of furniture during a few stolen weeks.

He stole the time from himself, who else. He shouldn’t be frittering it away; he could have followed Mies van der Rohe to America.*

But with the saturated sleepers he was very lucky, inexplicably lucky. The mysterious saturant had an unpleasant odor reminiscent of valerian, but it left no visible trace or stain and lent a deep-purple tone and a most exceptionally silky surface to the wood. While masons and roofers were busy inside and out with the Buda building on Dobsinai Road, he could make good progress in Mohács, working on the deep-purple silky-surfaced furniture for Mrs. Szemző’s clinic. Of course, they had barely delivered the sleepers from Gottlieb’s about-to-be-liberated lumberyard when Madzar discovered that it was going to be harder to take possession of his father’s abandoned workshop than he had thought. During the long years when the workshop was closed, woodbine had crawled into the roof space between the tiles and the gaps in the roof timbers and cracks in the corbels, across the splits in the adobe, looking for openings in the roof beams and planks, and it descended from the ceiling like a curtain. It was lovely, striking, and not hard to remove, but its tendrils had dangerously invaded the walls, the tool shelves, parts of the machines, and with its adhesive pads was grasping objects from all sides. He couldn’t just go at it, yanking it off, with impunity; tools, boxes, and shelves then went flying and crashing in all directions, screws and nails scattered everywhere.

At the same time, he didn’t want to rush anything. Which meant that he had completed only three important pieces by late autumn, virtually minutes before his departure.

After that he had time only to put the objects in their designated locations and call for the photographer.

It was better that way, because he and Mrs. Szemző had no time for a sentimental farewell.

Which only increased their mutual admiration.

They’d never see each other again, how fortunate, they thought, looking into each other’s eyes, and thus they managed to glide through their relationship unscathed, almost.

But in that early April heat, Madzar began his work on the chairs and armchairs. Soon the weather turned cool again, it rained a lot, and occasionally he had to light a fire in the potbelly stove. For him this was the greatest excitement and pleasure, the chairs. He hardly ever listened to news on the radio or picked up a local newspaper, for he didn’t want disturbing news to interfere with his work. Sometimes, information about what was happening around him reached him days after an event. He thought of the Germans’ strategic ideas as a material form or structure. To stupefy the unsuspecting world with revisionist demands, as if peaceful solutions still had a chance. War was imminent. And he did not need Bellardi to convince him of the dangers in German expansionism.* In his aesthetic struggle against decorative decadence, he kept a modicum of indifference about the threatening events. And he went on being annoyed by the nonsense he had heard from Bellardi. He could not get out of his head the childish drivel a spoiled aristocrat like him could come up with. Having seen Bellardi’s childishness, Madzar appreciated all the more the simple yet unusually speculative mechanism of Mrs. Szemző’s thinking. What disgusted him most was Bellardi’s dramatically conceived patriotic sense of responsibility, which no matter from what angle he looked was nothing but empty self-complacency and self-indulgence, just like Tonio Kröger’s many sentiments. He learned two days after the fact that Prague was next to fall, Vienna having been first, though the Czechs were defending themselves, their army’s motorized units were concentrating on their borders with Hungary and Germany. Or perhaps this too was nothing but provocation. While he worked, the thought that he should start packing was always with him, and he could see himself catching the last ship out of Genoa.

For a few days he followed the news persistently and even bought the miserable local papers.

He tried not to think about Mrs. Szemző while he worked, because he wanted to forget he was making these objects for her. Interestingly enough, the chairs were going to be heavier than they looked. He had to be careful not to make this work into a confession of love. He would have found that ridiculous. He was making the furniture out of military sleepers that were supposed to have been used in the war effort. He tried to be amused by this devilish twist of fate but couldn’t be; the coincidence that had brought the wood to him seemed too ominous. Secretly he hoped that Bellardi would stand by his promise and show up unexpectedly for the answer to his question.

It was a matter of just millimeters; there was practically nothing more to simplify in the chairs. Compared to Rietveld, he could at best change some of the proportions, giving greater emphasis to the texture of the material, but the material itself produced that. The emphasis was even stronger than Rietveld’s, and only Madzar knew it was nothing but pure luck.

He was particularly proud of this success of his, which seemed so improbable.

But he did torture himself with waiting for the unexpected.

Or was tortured by the rediscovery that Bellardi existed, that he still loved him, that he loved him despite all his ridiculousness.

But think how well you’ve been getting along without him.

It was not only the obligation he felt toward Mrs. Szemző that held him back from packing and leaving. This was a dangerous place. Dangerous things came to mind concerning Bellardi or, rather, because of Bellardi he mulled over sweet, desirable old issues that in no circumstance did he want to recall. At least while he was thinking about Bellardi he didn’t have to think about Mrs. Szemző; he could not help waiting for him. Or he wanted to forget the things he couldn’t help thinking about without connecting them to Bellardi. When he went to Buda to check up on the work on Orbán Mountain and to look in on the cabinetmaker on Szív Street who was working on the interior furnishings, he took the train to be sure not to meet him. He contacted Mrs. Szemző exclusively by telephone, emphasizing that he had to return to his workshop because after all he was laboring diligently on furniture for her clinic. But he did not dare tell himself that the work was more important than she was, and in addition Mrs. Szemző spoke to him very reservedly.

Which caused him immeasurable pain.

It was always because of Bellardi that he hastened to return to Mohács, and he had neither reason for nor the right to such pain.

He worried that Bellardi might be looking for him in Mohács and that they might miss each other, perhaps for life. He wanted to avoid the woman, and used the furniture as his excuse, but he also didn’t want to miss Bellardi.

Sometimes, when he was listening to the news, he caught himself not paying attention. How can he hear what they’re saying on the damned radio when his mother is so passionately chopping parsley.

Stop for a moment, Mother.

Can’t you see I’m trying to listen to the radio.

After a while, he could not but notice that his irritation was unreasonable. Every incidental noise bothered him. One can’t say that noise bothered him in his work but, rather, in that intimate process, that inner monologue of his open to both past and future that had become integral to his work. And the sharp shrieking of the riverside swallows brought Mrs. Szemző so close that, no matter how hard he tried to distract himself with thoughts of Bellardi, he was always thinking about her to a small degree. As if in his imagination Mrs. Szemző had to be the one to strike Bellardi dead and, if this was impossible because of the swallows, then the other way around.

Slowly, summer came into full bloom, and soon he realized that the birds were indeed swallows and that the days were becoming hotter.

Because of a third person, not to think of the person he was thinking about. How lovely it would be to go for a walk with Mrs. Szemző along the river, among the shrieking swallows. And he decided — in order to bring about some quiet within himself after being buffeted by these two — to bow to Bellardi’s request and not oppose him. And he will not yield to Mrs. Szemző’s attraction, that won’t do, it’s quiet just working for her. After all, the reason he imagines there might be something between him and Mrs. Szemző is so as to forget that poor woman in Rotterdam who stayed with her husband, or rather, to forget the husband, about whom he knew everything, which proved to be too much. He did not want more knowledge now, especially not of another man. And, being human, he did forget the husband, though the woman would not leave his limbs, his hair, the taste buds of his tongue and palate. He had no time to get mixed up in new adventures just to forget her.

He should stop stealing time from himself.

There will be plenty of Jewish women in America.

But to Bellardi he would say yes quickly, this he did decide, he would surprise him with a quick and decisive yes.

He could no longer stay here, if only because of Bellardi’s stupid plans with that secret society.

I’ve thought it over, I’ve changed my mind, he’d tell him.

He wouldn’t let them draw him into anything, of course, that’s out of the question, but this is what he’d say, this is how he’d solve the problem, with a manly yes. Nothing was farther from him than the cause of Hungarians and these childish things, these little conspiracies. But he understood that the undertaking did have a logic to it; it wouldn’t be hard to pretend to accept it. He’d do exactly what Bellardi would in a similar situation: wrap his reservations in inquisitive questions, show enthusiasm and admiration for the cause, then wait and listen, under no circumstance argue with anyone, and thereby hold all the strings in his own hand.

Hungarians never make decisions about anything; instinctively, he too wanted to avoid that.

He didn’t want to lose Bellardi’s goodwill, though he could not tell why he needed it. Or even if there was some mysterious need in their relationship, with ancient history behind it, like having been bound together by something from before their births or possibly by the dazzle of their shared childhood, he still couldn’t tell, though he couldn’t deny it either. But even so what benefit did he derive from it.

As though friendship’s temperature were measured in units of utility.

Why would he need such a wretched man, what have I to do with such a high-class fraud.

First, he had to cut everything down to size, but that made so much noise it was hard to think about certain persons. He made the necessary drawings in an oversize English sketchbook. He enjoyed drawing and while doing it he worked out every detail of all the possible answers he might give to Bellardi. Now and then he caught himself making his sketches unpleasantly violent because of his thoughts. Violence stared back at him. The simplest way to reject Bellardi’s suggestion would be to show enthusiastic interest in it. Sexual violence, said his sketches. Several times he also drew his mother as she stood in the workshop door, leaning on the doorpost, her white kerchief tied behind her head.

She liked standing around, in the noise of chiseling.

When I was in the store today, I heard the Gottliebs went to America.

To where, who, Madzar shouted back across the noise; the news so surprised him he could not comprehend it.

While drawing, he’d chisel smooth for himself the appearances he wished to maintain in Bellardi’s and Mrs. Szemző’s company, and, for this effort to succeed, he violently tore the violent sketches from his book and crumpled them.

He will take with him to America one sketch of his mother.

And he will transfer his money to another bank.

For that, he will have to go to the capital again.

But he won’t risk it now because if Bellardi hasn’t come for the answer by now, he must surely come any minute. He made a few drawings of him from memory, full-figure drawings, but he tore them up and, finding that inadequate, burned them, though he wanted to turn his image into sketches of attractive nude boys. Each time he burned a drawing, he had to make a new full-figure sketch as a basis for future drawings — until he had another fit and burned them all again.

Consulting the schedule of the Carolina, Madzar figured out when Bellardi would be in Mohács.

He had so much figuring to do anyway, and these various calculations persisted in crossing and accompanying one another.

All right, he said, he didn’t come today, but he might come the day after tomorrow. It became almost unbearable to think that every third or fifth day Bellardi sailed by on the Danube, touching Mohács, but didn’t get off. He made his calculations because he did not want Bellardi to surprise him. Today he didn’t come, so now there’s a respite for a few hours. Thank God he’s not coming. He could not endure his former friend’s capriciousness and inconsistency. When every third or fifth day the critical hour arrived and the moment was approaching, the blood jolted in his head and he felt himself blushing in shame.

His heart beat loud at the sound of the ship’s horn coming close.

Then he preferred to think about Mrs. Szemző; he made as if to think about her but in the end did not. His hand slipped; in alarm he had either hit or grasped something the wrong way. His old friend might show up in a few minutes, though he wished he wouldn’t come — now or ever again. He even sighed and moaned in his wild joy. Such an emotional turmoil was not without its danger because the old power saws made by the Langefelder machine factory had hardly anything by way of protective devices. He was embarrassed to think such thoughts and to be making little moans instead of watching what he was doing with his hands, but he had to admit he had good reason to tease and make fun of himself.

He was indeed waiting for his lover.

So what if at least twelve years had gone by without giving him a thought. Which, of course, was not even true. Bellardi might come this afternoon. Or if not this afternoon he might come five days from now in the middle of the night. The latter was the more exciting image, that he’d arrive at night. They’d sit on the veranda with a bottle of good wine until dawn, he’d ask his mother to bake some of her pork-scraps round cake. He wondered whether he should tell his mother in advance about Bellardi’s possible visit.

Mother, please be prepared, I might have a guest soon.

But he said nothing about it to her.

Yet his mother spoke, from behind his back, asking whether she should count on anyone coming, perhaps a guest.

Yes, he shouted over the noise of the power saw, but don’t make a fuss. If he comes, he comes, if he doesn’t, nobody else will be coming.

And to keep his mother from asking more questions, he quickly asked her whether she knew what had happened to Gottlieb’s dogs.

What dogs, his mother shouted back in German.

Madzar stopped sawing; only the drive belt was making repeated clattering noises.

He had two large dogs, didn’t he.

How in hell would I know what he did with them.

So his mother didn’t dare ask whom they might be waiting for, though she remained for a long time in the workshop doorway, standing silently, watching her son measure everything more than once and make new marks before putting the logs to the saw.

Her son did not like it when every so often she spoke to him in German.

Mother, you probably beat those dogs to death yourself, he said aloud later; he had long wanted to learn the truth from her.

What dogs, son, his mother shouted back, this time in Hungarian.

When the subject was unpleasant she preferred the foreign tongue.

Well, our two big white dogs, the komondors, I’ve been thinking about them, said Madzar, as if in passing, as if he weren’t truly interested and might not even hear her answer in the noise. He did not look up from his work; with such transparent maneuvers he thus occasionally managed to trick his mother.

Oh, son, that was so long ago.

Once again, only the noise of the drive belt was heard. They said nothing for a long time, but as she looked at her son’s strong back while he was checking the cutting surface, she knew that if she did not give a straight answer she’d have to leave, because her son would be angry with her.

First, I killed only one of them, the bitch, she answered.

But why did you do it, that’s what I want to know.

The female was the wilder one. I couldn’t cope with them, because they listened only to your father, son. They were partial to him, how could I live with them.

Now the silence felt better.

The sheer mention of Bellardi’s name always provoked excitement in his mother, so for his peace of mind Madzar did not risk invoking it. She was more in love with Bellardi than he was, if that was possible. She treated him, even when Bellardi was a small child, as if the Lord Jesus had come down to them or had sent the little boy with his schoolbag in his stead.

Ultimately, the Bellardi-Montenuovo clan has always been and will forever remain the first family of Mohács.

Madzar knew this was the right opportunity; he could make it easier on himself because he wouldn’t have to wait alone for Bellardi, but he said nothing. Yet the very next day silent preparations began for receiving the guest; his mother was baking, I’ll bake some cheese bundles ahead of time, she said.

Which made her kitchen bloom with the sweet smell of vanilla.

Maybe you should bake some pork-crackling cones, Madzar said incautiously, for with the crackling cones, which Bellardi could never get at home, he revealed everything to his mother.

He blushed so hard he had to turn away.

I already did, son, don’t worry, just the way you like them, she added tactfully, as if she had no suspicions regarding the possible guest, I cut the pork crackling very fine before mixing it in. But it’s not my own anymore, that’s the problem. I had to have crackling delivered from Lehmann’s this morning. At least he has it fresh twice a week.

She cleaned the spacious veranda, the large living room, and the bedroom, where they might have to put the overnight guest. Unless he plans to spend the night elsewhere. Very few tradesmen’s families in Mohács could boast of such expensive bedroom furniture. These pieces had taken up an entire classroom of the local school when they were displayed as part of the great industrial exhibition, which His Excellency the regent came to see as did the royal princes, together with Magda Purgly, not to mention Archduke Frederick,* the prince of Montenuovo, and the Odescalchis. The furniture, made of pure Finnish poplar, was the masterwork of Tóni Windheim Jr., made after he had returned to his father’s plant from his wanderings. They had the wood brought from Finland; Sanyi Csikalek prepared the upholstery for it. The old Windheim manufactured an entire set; we bought ours from the first batch. He also sold a lot in Vienna, he shipped them there himself. Along with old Csikalek, they received a gold medal for it. But they got their medals separately, each for his own work. That’s when your father also received his, in 1926, when the grand exhibition was held on the four-hundredth anniversary, but you do remember that. Old Windheim was still with us then. They were standing like this, I’m telling you, your godmother to my right, and in front of her the whole big Windheim family, including the relatives from Pécs. Don’t forget, they are also our relatives, all of them. I’m saying it just like that, just as we said back then, not only the Catholics, we took an oath and everyone cried, everyone who came to Széchenyi Square that day. No stranger will ever set foot on our homeland as long as one Hungarian is alive. How could we forget the Serb rule. You can’t know about this, what are you laughing at. But Archbishop Zichy could not say this then because the Serbs were standing there crying. My, the things those people did, son. They broke down the door of our house in the dead of night. To this day I cry, son, when I think of that devastation. It was beautiful; you can laugh all you want. We’d swear there would be no discord, no disagreement. But the poor man could not get the gold medal himself, our young Tóni did, though it rightfully belonged to the old man.

Mother knows right well what I’m laughing at.

Hungary’s always been lost because of discords. There’s nothing to laugh about there.

Haven’t you been lost yourself, haven’t you said the same thing yourself plenty of times. Then why are you laughing at others. Just because you’ve seen the world, you don’t have to put your nose in the air.

The cover on the double bed, piled high with eiderdowns and pillows, was made of smooth, glossy yellow cotton twill, as was the upholstery on the two chairs, the round pouf in front of the dressing table, and the armchair, all of which were overlain with heavily starched handmade lace. Whenever Mrs. Madzar reminisced about the oath, Madzar had to smile because his mother truly did not consider herself Hungarian. We are German, she would say proudly, raising her white-kerchiefed head high. She said it as if she were removing her son from among the Hungarians.

Luckily, my son, she always said, with your nature you take after me more than after your father.

If only you didn’t urinate on the roses the way he did.

She moved out into the summer kitchen, sleeping on the cot, so that the precious bedroom would remain untouched until the guest’s arrival. A commodious white porcelain chamber pot was also part of the furnishing. They had never used it, because inside and out it was painted full of pretty little blue forget-me-nots. Still, during every spring and fall cleaning, Mrs. Madzar scrubbed it spick-and-span. Since she has been alone, she uses a blue, zinc-coated bucket at night so on cold nights she needn’t leave the bedroom and go outside. She was afraid, scared of every shadow. But she did not want more dogs in her life, because she’s had to beat enough of them to death. Earlier, they kept the bucket, if not this one, out on the veranda. It was not nice to let the man hear the woman’s dribbling. But even in the coldest winter nights her husband thought nothing of standing on the steps of the veranda and pissing from there.

I’ve never regretted marrying a Hungarian, but this I could never forgive the two of you.

That you have to piss on my roses, making the whole yard stink.

I can’t understand how Hungarians don’t smell their own stench.

Since they talked about a possible guest, she had been airing out everything, mercilessly chasing the tiniest flies and numerous mosquitoes. Every evening, she collected the day’s eggs in separate baskets. Her zeal irritated Madzar, her humbleness and servility because of the supposedly upper-class guest.

Why must you prepare so much, Mother. But he restrained himself, did not say anything. They talked very little anyway. Unless his mother was doing one of her well-practiced monologues, silence reigned in the house and above the yard. At most, the power saw screeched on the wood. The feeling itself was unjust toward his mother. Still, he did not show his real feelings. And Mrs. Madzar was very indulgent with her son, that was the reason — not thoughtlessness — she always talked with him about something other than what they should have talked about.

There were so many things that a mother could not talk about with her grown son, anyway.

She did everything not to hurt her son.

Because what she feared most was that this, her last remaining son, was about to leave her for good.

He was in such a hurry he did not even bring any luggage and he walked around in his father’s clothes.

Very carefully, she said to him, son, people will laugh at you in your father’s clothes.

Actually, her son confused her in these clothes.

You’re paying for your expensive hotel room in Pest instead of bringing your fine clothes here.

I’d keep them in fine order here.

Come on, Mother, who would laugh at me, I don’t know a soul in the whole city.

The city knows you’ve come home, son. At least when you leave the house you should wear your own clothes. Can’t you see how much you take after your father. He also saved money on things he shouldn’t have.

Oh, Mother, stop chewing my ears off.

As if you were only a tradesman, that’s what you look like in your father’s clothes.

Well, Mother, what should I look like.

You’re working here and paying for your expensive hotel in Pest. Gottlieb’s older son has two cars in America. I’m afraid your studies may have been in vain. The way you’re going, you’ll never have anything.

What have I got to do with Gottlieb’s older son, Mother.

He uses one to deliver merchandise. In the other he takes his family on outings.

How many times have I asked you not to interfere with my life.

But try as he might, no matter how much he felt he was behaving very properly, exercising the correct measure of self-discipline, with his mother he was unable to use a different tone.

Please be quiet.

Don’t you tell me to be quiet.

I know what I’m doing.

In a few days, he could see how thoroughgoing her secret preparations had been. And he also failed to banish Mrs. Szemző from his mind, because whenever he finished his daily work — before twilight, for he did not feel like working by lamplight on this sensitive wood with its delicate color and proportions so easily distorted by electric light — then suddenly he felt very lonely. There was nothing to be done about it, and he was disturbed by the thought that he had no way of knowing what he was doing.

He sensed, like a heavy premonition, how utterly alone he would be in America if he ever got there.

On top of it all, the day was approaching when he would have to interrupt his work here and go back to Budapest for the work on Dobsinai Road. And he worried that the apartment would not turn out as he had hoped. That it wouldn’t satisfy his demands for architectural purity. Don’t let the telegram come just yet. If Bellardi arrives at night, he’ll be getting off at Mohács on his way from Vienna. Or else he might come five days later on the ship arriving from Belgrade at four in the afternoon.

But he did not come at either time, and Madzar again had to wait three more days, and he could be glad that no telegram came either. In his great expectation, he went so far as to leave his work quietly at the relevant hour and take a leisurely stroll down to the boat station. He went as is, in his father’s work clothes, to see with his own eyes whether Bellardi would disembark or not.

But he did not see him on the bridge.

He could have sent him a message, because he saw the Mayer boy.

But, outwitting himself, he had to pretend that only by coincidence was he observing from the willow trees along the shore the Carolina’s spectacular and noisy arrival and then its painful departure. When the Carolina was receding from Mohács, with its streaming, clattering wheels turning against the current, the wailing of its horn lingered for a long time. At such times, Madzar usually stopped either behind the customhouse or at the silk factory’s stone wall, but from there he did not see Bellardi either when the ship came or when it left.

Sometimes he would run out of the house at the doleful sound of the horn, just as he had in his childhood, hurry down to the dock and from the old fishing-boat landing watch the slow passing of the Carolina.

Once he saw Chief Counselor Elemér Vay get off, on his way back from Belgrade; the Mayer boy lugged his suitcases behind him. The smartly dressed, severe-looking gentleman was conveyed from Fish Market Square in the Hotel Korona’s black, crest-adorned carriage, while simultaneously, amid much blowing of its horn, the ship set out upstream, taking its passengers leaning on the railing. And this not only pained Madzar but also made him dread the pain of longing to be off.

Which should not have touched him. He did not want to admit that his life had various mysterious processes and phenomena that he could not clearly see even in retrospect and that no sober reasoning helped him anticipate. He feared them the same way he did bodily contacts he considered improper. And when once again Bellardi did not show up in the afternoon, and Madzar was left with only the Danube’s enormous currents and muddy, layered whirlpools, he took off on a longer stroll to work off his anger with Bellardi.

He should pick up at least two bottles of good wine; that way he wouldn’t be going home alone.

At least they’d have good wine when Bellardi came.

North of the city lay ridges and series of hills, covered with loess and divided naturally by vales that seasonal streams had created, where even in Roman times grapes were grown and where, thanks to Levantine wine merchants, the very demanding viticulture survived the century and a half of Turkish occupation. At some places, the ancient wine cellars had long since caved in. Above the buried, walled-up medieval labyrinths sat small windowless grape-crushing sheds and proud, richly decorated houses belonging to rich Swabian smallholders, with wooden porches and tripartite wooden facades overlooking the river. He made his way up here on banked, carriage-wide roads between vertical loess walls. He was recalling in more depth and detail what once had happened to him and Bellardi. It felt good to go for a long walk after a full day’s work. As if he were thinking that with these pieces of furniture he might be able to make a present of his childhood to Mrs. Szemző. Recollection itself was not surprising to him; he has had ample practice in it. While working, one concentrates on the details of details, and parallel with them all sorts of other things come to mind, details and images from his life completely unrelated to his work. Except that now this was happening in the city of his birth as he walked along fences and stone walls, among raging dogs, or clambering upward in the grave silence and green dimness of the banked roads. Preoccupied with a technical detail, such as that something needed oiling, he would recall the giant willow that arched over the swelling river, in one of whose branches they had spotted the little cripple, look, there he is, reading, because he was always reading, taking his books everywhere with him, and in the next instant he would suddenly realize that the V-shape belt of the electric saw was loose, and so on; thus his thoughts kept chasing one another.

Or in the midst of having to deal with some quintessentially technical detail, he might think, we are the culprits, and he would brood on this if he could not suppress his memories.

Bellardi did not come.

He wanted to give up on him, but anxiety, aversion to the other man’s capriciousness, elemental wonder at the sight of this strange man’s behavior, and existential fear about the future remained much too strong in him. He won’t even have one car in America, let alone two. I’m a dreamer who doesn’t do anything. And why in hell did Gottlieb have to go to America of all places.

Why couldn’t the Gottliebs let him have that pleasure for himself.

He decided to wait for him anyway, to be prepared, and not to let Bellardi surprise him. And the telegram still hadn’t come from the head mason or the cabinetmaker telling him to come to Buda. He and his mother ate up, or gave to friends and relatives, the plum-jam tarts, morello strudels, and cherry pies; his mother kept bringing fresh fruit from the island. At night he drank the light white wines he had brought from the Süssloch or from the valley of the Csele river, from the Stricker relatives’ vineyard, sitting by himself on the veranda, in the dark. He wouldn’t turn on the light. But why should Bellardi come to see him. Bellardi’s life was nothing but a series of promises he couldn’t keep, not even for himself. What cause could they have in common, no cause at all. Yet Bellardi must have felt bad about having been so firmly rejected. But Madzar couldn’t imagine not rejecting him, how he could have been less rejecting, what he might have done so as not to reject Bellardi’s proposal. What part of the proposal should he accept. Still, the following day he walked out of the city again to get wine, taking with him an empty demijohn, sat around again with the old men he knew, sipped wine with them until it grew dark above the cellars.

If Bellardi comes now, he won’t find him at home.

Sometimes it rained for long spells and he could not go out for days.

Gradually he had to admit to himself that during the twelve years of his forgetfulness, he had not only guarded the safety and strength of his emotional attachment but also nourished it, kept it alive. He allowed his most secret images to return to him, repeatedly, mutely; he reveled and delighted in them. Even though, along with Bellardi, he wanted to forget Mohács. The place where unsuspecting people go to hoe their vineyards, tie up their vines or pound vine props in deeper, and then suddenly the ground opens up beneath them.

Collapsing medieval cellars swallowed up and buried many of them.

The Gottlieb boy sat on a branch of the willow tree, and they were throwing stones at him.

He could not remember which of them started it. First they lobbed small pebbles from the shore, and the boy kept jerking his sharp little head away from them, and the two on the ground laughed silently, writhing like snakes; they could not completely suppress their laughter but at least held back the sound of it. At first, the little humpback could not understand where the pounding pellets were coming from; both Madzar and Bellardi were good shots. Somehow, it was also part of the game that the two of them were so strong and well developed while the other boy was a pigeon-breasted hunchback. They left the little grub alone for a while, let him reimmerse himself in his reading. Then they bombarded him again with handfuls of pebbles, burst after burst, let him beware and feel the pain.

It became more and more serious.

Let him hold on to the branches so he’ll drop the book.

After a while they saw that the cripple understood but in his great Jewish pride pretended to care about nothing but his book.

They were no longer laughing.

With bigger stones they were more certain to hit him. The stones thudded on his body, then splashed into the water. No other noise disturbed the grand summer landscape.

He was still pretending not to notice the impending danger, as if he were absorbed in his reading, and he did not hold on to anything. But he waited for the next missile with his thin little neck pulled in, risking much. With the hard cover of his book, he tried to protect at least his face, but of course he was always late; they hit their mark well. He not only made himself ridiculous but ran the danger of losing his balance and falling out of the tree.

They’ll get tired of their lousy prank and go away; that is what he must have thought.

But they did not go away, out of spite, because they figured that eventually he would climb down.

He uttered not a word from where he sat.

Then let him stay up there, up where he’d climbed by himself.

We’ll see who can hold out longer.

If he made a move to sit more comfortably with his book, they right away fired at him. And they did it when he stayed too long in one position.

When another gang of noisy boys arrived to fish for driftwood, their enterprise could no longer be kept secret and these newcomers were certainly not going to let the hunchbacked little Jew climb down from the tree.

He might have begged the two of them for mercy, but not the newcomers.

He and Bellardi might as well go home.

And when he returned one evening from the vineyard hills, a bit tipsy, not only was his supper waiting for him in the immaculate kitchen fragrant with freshly baked morello pie but his excited mother held out an unopened telegram, which reminded him of Bellardi’s long letter from the Trieste Naval Academy, every sentence of which had also surprised him.

Sometimes, Madzar left home so as not to be there if Bellardi showed up unexpectedly; it was a way to ensure his own surprise — to return to find Bellardi there.

Although the possibility of such a visit had never been mentioned, in the telegram Mrs. Szemző announced her arrival the next day.

Telegram in hand, the text much too long with too many detailed explanations, Madzar stood, overcome by the news as if hit on the head. He managed to read the first sentence all right, but he gave only a cursory glance to the rest. How could he prevent her. He turned red right under his mother’s watchful eyes. Bellardi must love him greatly, after all. There was no possibility of replying; the post office was closed at this late hour. He did not understand what this meant or what he had read in the telegram, because he hadn’t expected Mrs. Szemző to be interested in his work; this was too much for him. What did each word mean in the sentence about needing to clarify unresolved questions, and his mother wanted to know, and quite loudly too, who, when, and how many guests might be arriving. Or perhaps he had to go to Pest. Just to be on the safe side, as soon as the mailman left she had quickly slaughtered a chicken. Should she add another one. She had cleaned the vegetables for the soup and she would put it on the stove at dawn, but would her little boy tell her whether she should pick more carrots and turnips. It was as though each of his mother’s words reached him from a great distance, along with one of the telegram’s words hovering before his eyes, or as if the words had not reached him at all.

She already has nice new string beans in the garden. It’s a good thing they don’t grow just on the island.

They should pick some before it got completely dark; she’d make some bread-crumbed beans.

As if in her convoluted explanation Mrs. Szemző could conceal why she was coming and why so suddenly.

His first thought was that he should get some water from the soda man who had an artesian well; finicky Mrs. Szemző should not have to drink the stinking water from the Madzars’ well. With all those expensive words in the telegram, Mrs. Szemző revealed that her pride and standoffishness had collapsed; she couldn’t bear being without him, and putting aside propriety and decorum, defying the social differences, she was on her way.

He became inordinately cheerful and excited.

What came promptly to mind was Mrs. Szemző’s laugh, showing her big ugly horse teeth and bare gums.

Well, then, it’s happening after all.

At the mere thought, his prick stiffened and his sphincters contracted. But how would he tell his mother that she should expect the visit of a married woman. He quickly folded the virtually unread telegram and shoved it into his pants pocket. Because it occurred to him, and the possibility truly alarmed him, that tomorrow, on the very same day, Bellardi might also make his appearance.

Both of them might show up on Wednesday.

And in that case, responsibility for the death of the Gottlieb boy rests with them. Which neither of them would ever admit and Mrs. Szemző would never forgive if she knew about it. Luckily, it was only an accident. There was no summer without somebody drowning in the Danube. And why would the two of them have talked to each other about such matters. The water around Mohács is unpredictable enough.

They turned away from each other when other people spoke of the accident.

What time is it, Mother, he asked, a little sobered from his good mood.

He even asked if today was Tuesday.

Outside it was becoming quite light; birds began to chirp in the trees on Pozsonyi Road, though the first streetcar had not yet come.

I’ll go out for a walk, Madzar said, while thinking, no, I can’t do this to my mother, she’d die of shame. She’d start shouting about why should they host a rich Jewess and how could I even think of bringing a married woman into her house. And to do this in full view of the town too; she’d never live it down.

Maybe I’ll reserve a room for her in the Korona, then.

He imagined such a room, the kind he would reserve for Mrs. Szemző in the Korona and where the next day everything would happen between them.

But who is coming, son, his mother called after him hesitantly yet desperately.

Gyöngyvér’s hand rose properly above the keys as if she were certain what she must do with the conjured-up phrase. But everything happened differently. Could she accompany the sounds issuing from her on Mrs. Szemző’s piano.

Mrs. Madzar grumbled a bit more but then decided that she’d pick the string beans no matter what. She would prepare a good tomato sauce, brown the roux nicely no matter who came to visit; she’d serve that with boiled chicken and steamed string beans. In the seventh-floor apartment, it grew light earlier and dark later than down in the street, under the shade of the elms and above the insanely yellow pavement. With her keyed-up imagination she was moving forward in the pale light of Madzar’s remaining lamps, her flawless naked body caught up in the momentum.

In the end, she had the courage to hit only the lonely F sharp, waited patiently for the F sharp to address her body and then let her voice sing out, nice and round.

Well, at least it came out right again.

Again but only once and only by chance; she was actually preparing for something else, not this. She was preparing to take Mrs. Szemző’s impossible idea seriously: now I may be talking nonsense, but you tell Médike that not only should you sing Monteverdi, but you should also switch to contralto. And with that, Mrs. Szemző rose from the piano and began excitedly to look for the right sheet music. In the escritoire, the only piece left of the furniture Madzar had built, from which the unknown saturant was still emitting a faint scent.

Gyöngyvér also got up from the piano to get the sheet music but in the meantime she remembered where Mrs. Szemző kept the blankets. And the black dog on the bridge attacked Kristóf, knocking him against the railing and licking his face again with its huge tongue. The young man instinctively shoved the dog away; the touch of the strange beast inflamed his mouth, but his move came too late. His palate turned blistery, he thought he’d choke to death on the spot, but the dog thought that now they could begin to play.

It was snarling at him in happiness.

The next morning Mrs. Szemző arrived in Mohács, and not alone.

Then Ágost was startled by the sound and noticed with surprise that he was alone in the bed in the maid’s room. At least he could make himself comfortable. He was a little cold, he realized, irritated, where is she with that blanket, he thought wistfully, but then he fell right back to sleep.

At 11:20 in the morning, four minutes before the expected arrival of the woman, the unsuspecting Madzar was already waiting on the platform at the old railway station shaded by aged chestnut trees, sporting his father’s best summer suit, a light-green tropical worsted. He had worked until dawn in his father’s workshop so he could show Mrs. Szemző at least the sketches of all the objects he was making for her. He held his father’s panama hat in his hand, twirling it nervously. During the long night he had managed to assemble roughly every piece of furniture except for the desk, the folding screen, and the davenport, including the all-important delicate couch of which they both expected so much. If only he could put together in fitting layers the experience of several centuries. The practical question he had to answer was this, in what manner does a relaxed body lie on a couch. His body shuddered in the early dawn light; the weird exhibit he had prepared surprised him. The hastily assembled pieces of austere furniture were propped up with other objects and implements and stood forlornly among the machines. He knew that no one in the world had ever received such a worthy confession of love, and fortunately no one besides him could know this; a stranger could not possibly understand. Mrs. Szemző will not understand either. Yet secretly he hoped she would.

The panama hat, however, was too small; until the very last minute, his mother begged him not to put it on unless he wanted to become the laughingstock of the town.

Come on, Mother, then what the devil should I do with it.

Hold it in your hands.

The sky was a little cloudy on this Wednesday but the heat was great, with hardly any breeze because of the heavy humid air.

A real Hungarian summer, whose smell and heat he had thought so much about when he lived in Germany and Holland.

His ability to discipline himself notwithstanding, he felt he would have a long wait for any anticipated fulfillment. First the train had to deliver Mrs. Szemző, then the two of them would have to stroll back along sunny Danube Row to the parental house, and only then, finally, in the workshop could he show her the neat, elegant objects so enriched by their inner life. Beyond the railway station, beyond the black hills of the coaling dock, on the estate of Archduke Frederick of Lorraine two harvesting machines were at work; one could hear the harvesters’ drawn-out shouts locked in the machines’ monotonous noise. In the summer seasonal laborers from Göcsej worked on the archduke’s land. Perhaps those were not shouts but the singing of laborers as they lay in the shade of acacias waiting for the midday sun to relent a little. Here, on the flat expanse of Sátorhely, where according to the old historians the Turkish and Hungarian armies had marched against each other in 1526, the fertile, much envied fields stretched all the way to the grape-growing hills. Madzar was not alone on the platform; other people were waiting for the train too. In his excitement he paid no attention to the exceptional human sounds, and there were many other kinds of noise as well. The tipcarts at the coaling dock were rhythmically clanging and clicking; from the loudspeaker at the nearby swimming pool the melody of a popular tune radiated as far as the station. In the surrounding landscape irregular pulsating shouts sounded like a work song filled with accusations, or like a recitative proclaiming the desolation of fate. When the short train with its stocky engine approached and then pulled into the station, activities intensified; railway workers and porters moved out from the shade, and to his astonishment he quickly recognized, in the slowly moving window of a first-class car, Mrs. Szemző’s two sturdy, aggressive little sons, surrounded by young girls or rather young ladies. They were literally hanging out the window, eagerly showing something to the brightly dressed girls who in the wind created by the train were holding on to and waving their hats. One could also see two well-fed rats running between the basalt track bed and the concrete wall of the platform, along with the train. In the noise of the braking train, Madzar had no time to become used to the thought that Mrs. Szemző was not alone.

He felt like blaming Mrs. Szemző for this first surprise, as for a serious misdeed, and also like making excuses for her.

When the conductor finally opened the doors, Dr. Szemző’s bald head and beaming face shone down on Madzar.

In his utter confusion he did not understand anything. He had been through many things, but for the first time in his young life he felt he would perish, he could not bear it.

He felt as if he had been caught with his desensitized feelings showing, without time even to blush. Mrs. Szemző cannot be without her sons and the sons cannot be without each other. What should he do now, he wondered, but he had no time for such questions. At any rate, his familiar world was turning upside down, about to fall on his head. Something was happening, or was beginning to happen, independent of him, which he could not comprehend. It was as if in this very exceptional moment he confessed to himself that he could not be without Bellardi. First, he had to greet Dr. Szemző, to acknowledge and reciprocate the man’s obvious pleasure in seeing him, which must have been genuine, seeing that Madzar was building a big new home for him with the best available materials and equipped with the highest achievements of modern technology. At last he glimpsed Mrs. Szemző, who, in the company of a very fetching, fragile woman about her age, was coming toward him.

They smiled at him from the midst of their intense conversation.

It soon became clear that the woman had been one of Mrs. Szemző’s classmates in school. Laughing and cutting into each other’s words, they were telling Madzar that only two days earlier they had been together at an open-air concert on Margit Island, and now they had met on the train completely by chance. They were laughing about how insane such coincidences were.

Every summer she brings her pupils, students at the Hungarian Royal School of Industrial Design, to Mohács, and they, she and Madzar, might have met before.

The woman rather dazed Madzar.

You know, I’ve lived abroad for a long time, he said politely and a little as if excusing himself.

They are all studying textiles, the woman explained, shining her large bright eyes on him, and for years the city had been kind enough to put the rooms of the empty hospital for infectious diseases at their disposal.

Which is ideal, enthused Mrs. Szemző, who felt she should mitigate somewhat the excitement generated by this unexpected encounter.

Ideal indeed, and not only because it’s comfortable there and the silk factory is nearby, not just that, enthused the rail-thin, black-haired woman dressed in layered silk. You’ll see for yourself what a splendid chestnut-tree park the building has, just splendid, she cried, and with her enormous eyes glanced at the architect, who surely knew this splendid park.

There, outside, we can do our watercolors under the trees, to our heart’s content.

Madzar was looking at the scar on the woman’s face.

Otherwise, we use the empty wards as studios, when it rains.

Luckily we don’t have to be afraid of some devastating epidemic. The two women laughed together.

Originally that property belonged to the prince of Montenuovo, Madzar remarked quietly, to be part of the conversation somehow. This family, you should know, has a special standing in Mohács, where frugality would not be exceptional. The Montenuovos disliked plants that were merely decorative. For them, every plant had to make its own profit. That is why they had so many chestnut trees planted, back in the day.

He wanted to step between them, both to observe them and to end this senseless female shouting and giggling. As if to his shame he had no choice but to put himself in the middle of their chaos and cacophony. Again things were happening some other way, not his. A woman had again done something to him, and had brought another one along to boot. He was outraged, and for a long moment the two women sent searching, penetrating looks from under their large hats at the man who seemed to be emanating aversion and rejection. They also smiled at him politely, appreciating and at the same time assuaging his embarrassment.

Sizing up the expert who will be their splendid guide in the next few days.

He’d probably enjoy being their tourist guide.

It would be truly ideal, if only he were willing.

And while they continued to chat like this, they kept looking at him from under their hats and wondering what had gotten into this attractive though rather preposterously dressed man.

Her pupils would be so glad if he looked at their work.

With your belated permission, my dear architect, I told Miss Dobrovan that I had seen your wonderful drawings.

So it’s no secret to me that you have a great talent as a draftsman too.

She is flashing her bright eyes at me so that I won’t look at her scar.

Madzar did not fail to see that the women were playing an old, well-rehearsed game.

But the scene was brief, with every word passing smoothly and quickly among them. They prattled on as if their words scarcely touched them. And then they had to be busy with the luggage, giving orders as to where to put what. Hired carriages were waiting in front of the station. The porters put the bags and suitcases of the young ladies and gentlemen, along with their easels and drawing boards, into a bus. Waiting for the Szemzős was the Hotel Korona’s black-lacquered, crest-adorned light carriage with its cheerful coachman and two black horses, groomed to a high shine.

The spoiled little city boys ran to them, they wanted to make friends with the horses or at least to stroke their nice shiny coats. But the horses were leisurely and contentedly feeding from the nosebags hung around their necks. They swatted at horseflies with their tails, their skin quivering, or, by way of warning, kicked a bit in the rapturous boys’ direction.

Madzar did not understand how the black hackney could be waiting for them since he hadn’t ordered it the evening before, but he was also busy thinking that the boys might soon get into trouble. Anxiously he watched how the horses endured the boys’ aggressive adulation.

But I expected only you, he said stealthily to Mrs. Szemző. His stifled voice was filled with rebuke.

I reserved the nicest corner room for you.

As if asking, how could I have known you’d be coming with your entire family.

Which was something Mrs. Szemző did not understand. She had so many other things to worry about in any case.

Where did you reserve and what sort of room — in other words, she didn’t know what to do with the amorously reproachful emphasis in his sentence. No doubt she was embarrassed occasionally by her own quite erotic fantasies about Madzar, that they would do this and then that, and how the man would behave in this or that position, but their real contact neither allowed nor called for such delicate intonations and details. Cautiously, seeing Madzar’s agitated state, she quickly came back with a question as to whether he had received her telegram.

Of course he did, came the man’s indignant, aggressive reply.

Why would he be here if he hadn’t.

I should have wired earlier, Mrs. Szemző added apologetically, and speaking a little too loudly. Doing this at the last minute wasn’t very considerate of me, I admit, and her hand in the white doeskin glove rested for a brief and intimate moment on Madzar’s arm. As she had done a few weeks earlier in the empty seventh-floor apartment from where they could look out, between the blocks of the Palatinus apartment buildings, at the same Danube.

It was dizzying to look at the same river here, and this shared feeling — existing simultaneously in past and present — dazed them a little, as if from the renewed thrust of another insult.

And the reason I didn’t was so as not to burden you too much, Mrs. Szemző continued her sentence. So that you wouldn’t have time to make any preparations, and she was surprised to see how simple it was, despite the proximity of her children, to keep her composure. And wouldn’t even think of changing your schedule because of our family’s little excursion.

Madzar could not control himself so elegantly.

What do you mean by not wanting to be a burden, he asked in the same reproachful amorous tone he had used before, but then quickly regretted having opened his mouth. The emotion bruised the flattering image he had created of his own self-discipline. It’s not just me, my mother is waiting for you with lunch. For weeks, I’ve been doing nothing but work for you, he cried in a voice of stifled desperation.

And what shouldn’t I even think about then.

Oh my God, how embarrassing, cried Mrs. Szemző. If only we hadn’t already promised. Who would have thought your mother would be so kind as to wait for us with lunch. But now I really see my mistake. I should have asked well ahead of time if such a visit would be convenient for you. But I could not restrain the boys from going to Mohács — they do not know Mohács at all. You won’t believe me, she said, and reluctantly let go of Madzar’s arm — but the feeling of closeness only increased and remained in the flesh and in the marrow of the bones.

And now her voice changed too. For me, she’d be waiting with lunch for me, she asked, her voice no stronger than a breath, her eyes wide and wet.

As if they had mutually insulted the other’s sacred, grand human secret and foreignness.

Neither of them understood the other, and that hurt them both, or rather they both had to pretend not to understand the other. In Madzar’s mind arose the painful suspicion that indeed he was fatally misunderstanding or had fatally misunderstood something, though he could not comprehend what. It would have been senseless to ask who had deserted whom since their last encounter. At any rate, Mrs. Szemző looked out to the water, to the water flowing past ever since then, displaying on its surface the power of the driving current and the unevenness of the riverbed. It is my fault, ultimately, only mine, she thought, continuing to cry out inwardly. Their respective work had revealed themselves to each other, and she had ended up too close to this man.

Their glances, made painful with self-accusation and mutual incredulity, met once again.

They did not have much time for clandestine glances or stolen moments in which somehow to comprehend this, their very first public lovers’ quarrel. As contrary to their intentions, they found themselves in an impossible situation and had quickly to extricate themselves from the incomprehensible awkwardness, but they could not clarify anything: swishing her silken skirts, the black-haired lady approached to take her leave of them. But not before she made Madzar promise that the next morning he would come and join the students for sketching and watercolors. And in a moment she had read it all on their faces, perhaps more than was realistically possible, but she gauged everything by their stiff posture, in which one could not separate reality from opportunity. The two of them tried hard not to let her see anything. Nor could they have forgotten Mrs. Szemző’s energetic husband in his white linen suit, standing only a few steps away, busy with the porters and sending urgent glances in their direction because of the children. This is no time for long conversations. But luckily the two boys, all excited by the horses, were running back toward their mother. They ran to her in their identical white shirts and dark-blue pants fitted with suspenders, as if the horrible realization hit them like a blow to their bodies that a total stranger was now threatening their absolute power over their mother. They hung on her neck, pulled her down with their weight, telling her to come see the horses and, mainly, not to leave their father’s side for even a moment. They were demonstrating to the stranger, brazenly and shamelessly, their unbelievable power over everything. Madzar could see with his own eyes that this Mrs. Szemző was not an independent person; her two sons had her branded and shackled. Dr. Szemző, on the other hand, could relax and feel that they were all safe for at least a few moments. In all this emotional and social chaos and cacophony, the black-haired lady, swishing her yards of silk and rattling her ivory bracelets, whose name Madzar did not catch at the first or second hearing, arranged to be at the Hotel Korona with the Szemzős in an hour and a half.

For a drink, as she put it.

By then it would be clear whether they’d all go together for lunch somewhere, or to some restaurant, which someone must have already arranged with someone else.

But not with him; all this had been done without him.

This new information stunned Madzar, but he took a firm grip on himself. He politely accompanied them in the hackney to the hotel, enthusiastically pointing out and explaining things to the boys, so as not to feel his own pain.

Standing in the hotel lobby, which was dark, wainscoted, pleasantly cool, the Szemzős told him by way of good-bye that after supper they wanted to pay a visit, if only to make the acquaintance of his mother. Of course they’d come without the boys so as not to be too much of a burden.

Oh, not at all.

There was some give and take about this — perhaps they should all come for supper. They oscillated between yes and no.

And would he kindly excuse them for missing lunch, begged Mrs. Szemző, which Madzar could not understand — indeed at that moment he didn’t understand anything and nor could Dr. Szemző.

What lunch did we miss, darling, the latter asked.

The head of the hospital, a dear colleague of her husband, is expecting them at the Drágffy restaurant for a fish lunch, explained Mrs. Szemző almost desperately, so that at least one of the two men would understand the situation.

And the longer they tortured themselves with the obligatory politeness, the more embarrassing and painful the situation became, though individually none of them could have specified why.

As if here, in the city of his birth, perfect strangers were shutting him out of his own life.

He has the reputation of being a courteous man and therefore his life becomes one of slavishly satisfying other people’s wishes.

This is how Madzar was fuming inside.

But Dr. Szemző was also taking a good look at the place where he had wound up, asking himself what he was doing in this decaying country hotel.

Well, then, until eight tonight, all three of them were saying, making their parting sound light and cheerful. They were about to move out of the humiliating situation, but trouble never comes singly. Down the red-carpet-covered steps came Chief Counselor Elemér Vay.

Baron Bellardi had hastily introduced Madzar to Vay on the Carolina, and the chief counselor vaguely remembered that, yet he had no idea who the plain-looking young man was who was now receiving him with a smile at the bottom of the stairs. They could not avoid exchanging pleasantries; after all, they had been introduced. But why would Chief Counselor Vay have remembered such a person. In general, he didn’t care whom he talked to, just as he hadn’t cared on the Carolina whom Bellardi might introduce to him. Unimportant people did not interest him, and since he had spent more than forty years at various levels of public administration, he rarely erred about people. And he remembered having quickly registered that with this acquaintance of his, Baron Bellardi had once again made a blunder.

In the new situation, however, Madzar could not but obey the rigorous rules of civility and introduce to this high-ranking, authoritative government official the couple at his side, who smiled obligingly, and then help them exchange a few brief, smooth, and totally noncommittal lighthearted remarks. He saw to it that all four of them, expressing the very best wishes and compliments, mutually bowed to one another and then parted, in the merciless coolness of the bowing ritual and the friendliest possible spirit.

As befitted the chief counselor’s rank, an automobile was waiting for him outside the hotel, a sparkling dust-gray Mercedes Nürnberg with its enormous, immaculately glittering black fenders and comfortably wide running boards; the prince of Montenuovo had sent it.

By now, Madzar was seething. No one saw any of this on his face, of course, whose features were set to support an affable smile. All of them were showing their teeth; this was the odd way in which they reassured one another of their peaceful and friendly intentions. As if to say, just this one last time, that they were willing to forgo their dangerous bestiality. Elemér Vay was not overly pleased by this chance encounter, however, though responses like this could never be seen on him, and he made his way through the lobby looking quite content. He was clean-shaven; he had brought a cloud of scent with him, and now he was taking the cloud away with him. His suit, of the finest gray cotton, was freshly pressed; the crease of his pants could cut like a blade’s edge. Around his neck he wore a much too colorful silk cravat, unsuited to his sober appearance; it was a gift from his young wife and contrary to his social position, as it were, and it pleased him to wear it. His brown-and-white two-tone shoes had been polished to a glittering shine by his manservant, who had made ample use of his spittle in the effort. Given the strictly confidential nature of his conferences, the chief counselor could not deem this chance meeting pleasant.

And because of his high social position, sometimes it was difficult, occasionally impossible, to reach the real thing via appearances, but it was not always necessary for him to reach the real thing.

Bah, he would then say to himself, small stuff. Why should something I don’t know be important.

The chief bellboy rushed from behind the counter and, bowing and scraping, accompanied the distinguished gentlemen to the waiting automobile, which several small dirty children, scratching constantly, most likely from impetigo, were watching from the other side of the street.

Elemér Vay often pretended that servants were a burden to him and, as if to overburden the illusion, he looked through them as through air, but in fact, he approved of their eagerness to serve him. He looked at the bellboy from beneath half-lowered fleshy eyelids, which suggested sleepiness, just as, a moment ago, he’d given a quick glance to the features of the couple and their children and concluded they were Israelites, realizing that he would have to spend the night under the same roof with them in this decrepit hotel. He had found them and their exaggerated politeness unpleasantly importunate.

Not to mention the conspicuous absence of dignity emanating from these persons, with their desire to make friends, something he knew to be characteristic of Israelites. He had no time to waste on such silly episodes. From a social point of view, however, he could be satisfied with the complicated ritual of the introductions, which had gone off well. In Elemér Vay’s language, this meant that these persons had demonstrated the proper respect for him even if they were themselves not — because they could not be — flawless; put plainly, they were not socially competent. First Madzar had asked permission to introduce the head physician and then the two of them made bold to introduce the chief counselor to the lady. He had to accept their uncouthness magnanimously, con grandezza.

In the company of the retired county subprefect, Chief Counselor Elemér Vay had held discussions during the previous days with the town clerk, Vitéz Antal Éber, about the particularly delicate and confidential plan to draw up a complete inventory of Jewish wealth in the city and about the legal contingencies and procedural details they might consider in connection with relocating the Jews and confiscating their wealth. Besides the chief counselor, very few people were familiar with all aspects of this rather adventurous plan, requiring exceptional circumspection; it had been prepared two years earlier and now, in light of the latest diplomatic reports, seemed advisable to revive.

The secret plan did not follow the usual county public-administration network and therefore did not necessarily feature the county seats; instead, the most important transportation junctions were its focal points. The plans were drawn up when information gained through diplomatic channels had made clear that the Germans were going to relocate their Jews to Madagascar and, since through the same channels there was hardly a trickle of diplomatic protest against this plan, Hungarian diplomats concluded that the silence of European powers would be the equivalent of consent.

According to the plans, Hungary would be divided into seven relocation regions, called sectors or zones, as they were listed in the German-language information material. In the following weeks and in the least conspicuous manner, Elemér Vay had to visit all seven zones and evaluate the technical and personnel requirements necessary for the plan. The Jewish population to be resettled would be transported from these zones to Mohács, where, from the city’s cargo dock, they could be shipped smoothly down to the Black Sea.

The chief counselor was on his way back from Belgrade to Buda, where he had to make his report to His Excellency the regent about the state of the lower Danube harbors, but since Mohács was on the way, he got off there to take care of the equally urgent matter of gauging the city’s actual facilities, killing two birds with one stone.

In the center of every zone, within the official system of public administration, he was supposed to establish a separate unit with access to up-to-date information, in constant contact with the secret police and local police authorities and ready to be activated at any time, so that at the appropriate moment it could officially take over the management of all public matters. Legally, the undertaking had weak points. In borough councils, magistracies, and land registries, in the various chambers of commerce and law as well as in societies, clubs, and unions it was not difficult to obtain reliable data, most of which had been available for years, but they also had to get to the accounts of smaller banks, not to mention making a jewelry and art-treasure inventory; they should be able at least to give reliable estimates that might later be confirmed. Which meant that without the network of secret police agents, it would be impossible to tackle this job.

His mission called for the establishment of a nationwide network. He had to entrust the preparation of it to experienced officials who were above suspicion. To avoid any misunderstandings or mistakes in the delicate matter of selecting confidential personnel, he consulted with members of the supreme council of the powerful secret organization Magyar Hadak, or Hungarian Hosts.

He eagerly accepted their personal recommendations to ensure the best possible tailwind helping him to go forward in his work.

But at this first and perhaps most important station, given the central role assigned to Mohács, he realized with some consternation what an infernally difficult project he had taken on. Not because the city lacked good facilities for moving masses of people on a large scale. Mohács had gigantic easy-to-guard storehouses, an empty lime-burning plant, a hospital for infectious diseases that had been state-of-the-art for decades, a comfortable barracks built during the monarchy in which very large combat units could be quartered without difficulty, and, most important, ancillary railway lines that ran from outside the city to the cargo dock where black coal from Pécs was loaded on huge, capacious barges.

But it was very hard to make the rich local aristocrats understand that they should cooperate and proceed in step for a better future when the chief counselor could not inform them in detail what that might mean. They took his straight, manly speech as an insult. The realization hit him as if he were stabbed by a dagger that he could no longer count on the natural sense of hierarchy understood by monarchist aristocrats known for their loyalty. And if he encountered obstacles like this in Mohács, what could he expect in the Alföld* zones, where the local nobility’s stubbornness and wrong-headedness truly had no limits. In his eyes, the insidious spread of liberalism and freethinking was frightening. As if the secret institution meant to protect the Hungarian nation had been eaten through by pathological principles it should have already tackled and overcome. Put boldly, perhaps the Hungarian Hosts were no longer ready to act like a mighty army. But the chief counselor did not breathe a word to anyone of this alarming and perhaps overly hasty thought of his.

Lesser aristocrats were active in core cells, called tent units; in families; and in clans of the secret society where an almost freemason-like spirit prevailed. They did not understand why Vay was so secretive about a matter that was, for them, ultimately not a secret but rather the constant subject of their confidential conversations — and had been for many decades. Why shouldn’t they be accustomed to and enjoy the special freedoms granted by their offices, why should they bother to heed any authority. While engaging with these aristocrats, at best one could bolster one’s argument by referring to the authority of His Excellency the regent, but they, positioning themselves behind this same reference, immediately engaged in intrigues designed to help them evade their task or at least interpret it with an eye to the profit they might gain from it.

Vay explained to them the procedure, requiring exceptional and particular circumspection, saying that a pioneering law was in the making, much more severe than the one enacted last May,* as he put it, and that is why the interior minister needs this secret inventory. Finding it was but the first step in a grand, long-range plan, he added before falling silent.

At which moment he had a most unheimlich feeling that, with this obligatory silence, the lords were looking at him as if he were an agent provocateur.

Now these three men had been invited to the Montenuovo castle, some distance from the city, where the prince, whose sentiments regarding the Hungarian cause were unquestioned, was giving an exclusive luncheon in honor of the chief counselor. It promised to be a pleasant meal, since in the most delicate matters Elemér Vay and the prince held identical views and they both knew this of each other. Vay looked to the prince for a quiet sort of reinforcement against the other grandees who professed radical emotions and liberal views — for a loftier opinion unequivocally pronounced. The prince had been informed of details that, given the nature of the matter, the retired subprefect and the town clerk could not know, so the chief counselor could expect to receive the reinforcement as early as during the aperitif.

Only no ressentiment, gentlemen, no ressentiment at all, the prince responded severely to the subprefect’s first, rather emotional words.

By which he meant that such a tone, in his princely presence and on this question, was not permitted.

Over his glass the chief counselor shot a grateful glance to the prince. The two of them, unlike the others, did not surrender to emotions and sentiments when this subject came up; they were interested only in what was useful and whether what they considered useful was also plausible. Not only did they think that emotions had no place in the discussion, they had no use for views and opinions about foreign nationals. Which did not mean that they had not done the arithmetic showing the losses and gains of the proposed plan. If Hungarians, given their mental makeup, are more likely to hate Jews than hate subversive revolutionary ideas, even though the world has more to fear from the latter, then we need appropriate movements and arguments to protect them from a major Bolshevik upheaval. Therefore, not only is the inversion of cause and effect not problematic, it is downright fortunate and desirable.

And if others are already saying and doing this, it would be pointless to stand in their way, though it would also be a mistake not to keep this clever maneuver tightly controlled.

The final solution of the Jewish question may be achieved without further ado, for all time and to the complete satisfaction of our radicals.

But by itself, even the most thoroughgoing pogrom would be insufficient, as the prince was wont to say humorously, and it also would be foolish to play into Germany’s hands just to please the crowd.

They both inclined to consider beyond dispute Professor Lehr’s famous thesis regarding tactical accommodation, and regretted that our romantic compatriots tended to forget that today’s German interests differ from those of the much hated and much missed Habsburgs. Subjugating or weakening Hungarians is far from being in the interests of Germany today. We must remember that according to the most advanced genetic studies, only the Hungarians, along with Norwegians, can revitalize the German race. And with these words, Elemér Vay was quoting a foremost authority in the science of genetics, Professor Otmar Baron von der Schuer. From our point of view, of course, this scientific claim is unacceptable, but it does make clear that the survival and vitality of Hungarians is of basic interest to the Germans, not only for their selfish racist reasons but because Hungarian and German plans coincide at several vital points on the political level. And it would be a fatal mistake not to exploit these points in order to strengthen the nation’s position. Our task is to maintain a calm, dignified, self-respecting, resolute, and, mainly, ever-polite attitude toward the German element. Spiel mit, aber sei Dir dessen stets Bewusst, he shouted triumphantly.

We must help them as best we can so that they may take up arms against our greatest common enemy, Bolshevism.

Many people say that tactical accommodation demands too much sacrifice, too much self-discipline, and is too risky. But we must play along with them without ever forgetting what we are doing. Our responsibility, said Elemér Vay, with his practical way of thinking rounding out the professor’s abstract argument, is to maintain a sensible balance between cooperation and resistance until the German element arrives at a point where it can carry out its far-reaching grand design.

Et puis il y a toujours la Sainte Vierge, as the prince said in his inimitable way, to jovial laughter, concluding the dinner-table conversation.

Blushing was becoming permanent on Madzar’s face, it ebbed and flowed on his milk-white skin.

He walked away from the hotel with long strides, stood for some time in the hazy heat but could not calm down outdoors either.

He watched the car receding in clouds of dust, absentmindedly greeted approaching and receding strangers a little way from the hotel, near the blinding white walls of nearby buildings. There was hardly a soul abroad in the stifling midday heat. He felt like breaking and smashing things; only when nearing the parental home did he slow down a bit. If at that moment his mother had appeared, he would have raged at her, he was sure, as his father used to rage. But reason told him he should enter the house quietly, very quietly. He had the urge to scream as he crossed the empty, dead yard. He went the long way around to avoid peeking from the corner of his eye into the workshop, whose doors were wide open for the expected guests, and to keep from rushing in to demolish the ridiculous furniture. He wouldn’t have had to do much to make the pieces fall apart, along with their puritan discipline.

I am ruining my own life.

In the summer midday, motionless silence settled over the city and the river.

An occasional stray fly on the veranda window, shaded by the grapevine bower, provided the only movement. There, in the middle of the veranda, stood the table set for three awaiting Mrs. Szemző. The plates decorated with a cheap pattern, the vulgarly colorful and barbarically cut glasses, the cheap, polished-to-death cutlery. He took off his jacket, let it slip from his hand, he had no more use for it. Quietly he kicked off his ugly perforated shoes, careful that they made no noise on the stone. He gazed at these shoes made especially for festive summer events, but what he was really looking at were the indentations his father’s feet had created in them. He kicked off his pants, quietly. Last, he literally tore off the short-sleeved shirt, which had become drenched under the jacket. He remained half-dressed like that for a long time, in his father’s long underpants and his own milk-white skin.

He could not sit down because the armchair made of willow twigs would make a loud cracking sound.

Eventually he stopped wanting to sweep the settings off the table, as his father had done more than once at a Sunday lunch, or to smash everything to pieces.

But there was no part of his body unacquainted with the joy of breaking things.

And then his utterly humiliated mother would come and pick up everything from the stone floor and even be glad no one had beaten her. She has spent her life as my father’s servant and she’d be glad to become mine. Which would break his heart, he felt. He heard no noise from the corridor because she was probably waiting on the other side of the yard, in the summer kitchen, with all the food ready to be served.

Would that God, that son of a bitch, might bring the heavens crashing down on this fucked-up world.

As he carefully lifted his neatly folded work clothes from the top of the hope chest, he had to leave off with the cursing.

He managed to cross the corridor silently and close every door of every room, always darkened during the midday hours, without a sound.

No door handle clicked in the stillness.

He lay motionless on the sofa for a long time.

The mute summer sizzled through the cracks of the drawn shutters.

He had spent his nights on this living-room sofa and maybe he slept on it now for a short time. Because suddenly he jumped up, startled, as if someone were about to kill him. He had to go to work, otherwise he would not finish on time, let others have a ball, and he quickly reached for his work clothes, as he did every morning. Both his feet were in the legs of his cotton pants when he remembered the previous night, Mrs. Szemző’s telegram, his own ridiculousness, and the arrival of all those people. With his pants pulled up only to his knees he sat back on the sofa, took the telegram out of his pocket where he had shoved it, blushing, the night before, and spread it out on his knees. In the dimness he had to lean close down to the paper, which made him look like a child. In his shame he then leaned farther forward, as if he had to vomit. In his shame he buried his face in his hands. He did not understand how he could have sunk so low. Because, although obscured by a convoluted style and labyrinthine phrases, everything was there, spelled out in the telegram.

How could he have misunderstood it so badly.

The previous evening he had seen not what was in the telegram, with the peculiar letters of the telegraph machine, but what he recognized from his ridiculous daydreams in those letters. How could he have made himself so vulnerable to this woman.

So, that’s how low I’ve fallen.

Of course, now he saw clearly how it had all happened. As if, locked in his body, he’d been forced to live simultaneously in several parallel worlds and, given the current tensions, had by accident mixed them up and replaced one with the other. And thus he had indecently revealed to Mrs. Szemző one of his hidden selves, which she, luckily, not being familiar with his other hidden world, couldn’t have understood.

When he recalled these events long decades later, he sadly acknowledged that despite everything he had never been happier than he was during the next few days which the Szemzős spent in the city of his birth, and that he had suffered untold agonies in wanting the woman’s body so much.

He could no longer tell himself he was not attracted to her.

On a single occasion, they embraced each other in the afternoon quiet of the workshop, among the pieces of furniture in progress; then they could feel it.

His happiness was brief, the kind one never comprehends except when unexpectedly one remembers it.

Or, if he was happy sometimes, he may have felt it even more deeply and free of dramatics, but never so darkly and so lightheartedly as back then.

Like Fine Clockwork

Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of tearing you away from your dear Hungarian friend, how could I, replied Otmar Baron von der Schuer when he heard Baroness Thum’s feeble protestation, and amid the throng streaming from pretty St. Anne’s Church in Dahlem he stopped unexpectedly.

Please forgive my thoughtlessness, he added, speaking loudly in the sunny, cheerful cacophony that followed the somber service. He had it easy, since he towered over the crowd, but the two ladies had to make quite an effort to resist politely the thrust of the human current around them.

The late-August morning was redolent of resin; people who wanted to chat had to shout over the two bells ringing their farewell to the faithful.

Which made a peculiar impression on them.

Both of you are more than welcome at our table, nothing could be more obvious, of course, naturally, without a doubt. And he briefly bowed his handsome, smoothly chiseled soldierly head to Countess Auenberg, whom he had just met for the first time in his life. He sincerely hoped it was not for the last time; if she would be kind enough to oblige him by accepting such a hasty though heartfelt invitation, he said more quietly after the two bells fell silent, having sounded two small belated rings, please believe me, and above the human hubbub one could hear the singing of fieldfares, guarding their second batches of eggs.

Countess Auenberg had no idea what she should believe and why the baron was padding out his speech so much, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about. Silent and bewitched, they looked into the depths of each other’s eyes, seeing through their cambered lights and reflections, which Baroness Thum did not fail to notice; indeed, their lack of restraint all but took her breath away.

The fieldfares singing on high, the wrens whistling at shoulder level, and the flocks of sparrows twittering at ground level amplified their sense of the space around them.

They gained a good insight into each other in a twinkling of the eye, as it were.

Yes, surely, with pleasure, replied the countess with some reserve and also some confusion about the depth of their mutual gaze and the capacious feeling of her inner space. Almost with reluctance. Which she must have heard in her own voice, because she tried to balance it with bubbly but not completely convincing freshets of enthusiasm. She lifted her voice above her own sentiments because she saw clearly that Schuer was not at all the decent fellow he wanted the world to see him as. The throng was carrying them along the meanwhile, and each of her sentences sounded like her last. She’d be separated from the one she had just come to know. She hadn’t counted on being the guest of such an important scientist, an unhoped-for honor.

But despite what she had seen in the depths of his eyes, she could not deny her attraction to him, and that made her edgy.

She owed him her gratitude in advance, she said, accompanying her words with a nervous little laugh, which made her face even prettier, because she wouldn’t be able to resist flooding him with questions. The baron might not believe her, but she was greatly interested in race biology and genetics research.

But Schuer found the countess’s enthusiasm neither amusing nor fawning; in fact, he did not believe she could be interested in anything, for in the depth of his soul he never seriously believed women would ever have a prolonged interest in any scientific topic or subject. For a moment he stared inexpressively at this shocking feminine phenomenon and then stopped listening to her altogether. Anyway, he had never heard of a family such as hers, which made him distrust the Hungarian woman with a German name. Regarding women, the most he was willing to concede was that they had patience for details or were good at collecting data. At any rate, he continued in an entirely different, rather soldierly manner as he turned to Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein, I must exchange a few very personal and at the same time strictly official words with you.

You will understand, I’m sure, he added, but this too was more because of the presence of the foreign woman. The relationship between the baroness and him had been very tense, so he measured his words; they had to avoid arguing. Although it would not have occurred to the baroness that the unexpected invitation to lunch could be refused or that the baron might provide some explanation for his uncivil behavior. At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, the research workers were terrified of Schuer’s threatening countenance. There was actually nothing threatening in his appearance — on the contrary, everything about his mood, his manner, his attire was smooth, flawless, and poised — but with his perfection he reminded them of their own human imperfections, and almost all of them felt this.

They hastened to satisfy his every wish.

At this moment, Baroness Thum, with some anxiety, was hoping that her old wish would come true and that she would be sent to Rome. Her boss was not known for personal conversations or insignificant invitations, and given his high position, his house ran on a busy schedule and he had his share of social obligations.

There could be no other reason for this sudden lunch invitation but that the professor wished to give her confirmation of her mission to Rome.

At least the baroness could not think of any other.

Indeed, in Schuer’s life obligation had a larger part than pleasure. Like fine clockwork, he was reliable, quick, dutiful to the point of humility because he wanted to satisfy his idolized father’s never-uttered demands for quality; and for the same reason he was diligent and painfully impartial in his judgments; it would be very difficult to accuse him of cringing before authority. He had the reputation of being a deeply God-fearing man, and in some way he may have been one. To this day, he feared nothing more than the withholding of love, though he himself was more likely to do anything than to express love.

His pagan experiences had compelled him to be an even more perfect Christian.

Whenever he agreed with the Nazi leaders, he was basically obeying the commands of his own conscience, expressing his own convictions, but he was far from agreeing with them about everything. Because he always kept a higher scientific or religious standpoint in view, his opinions had great persuasive power, which allowed him occasionally to resist or be blunt.

The prestige of his science increased steadily, for it proposed many direct or indirect solutions to problems concerning growing human populations, problems to which the governments of fast-growing mass societies throughout the world, whether aristocratic or democratic, were but helpless bystanders. There was a need for definitive solutions to a number of provocative issues concerning population hygiene. And the more pressing the demands for his science became, the more rapidly did his career blossom. His fairness and selflessness were above suspicion, and with his powerful insights he unerringly separated the essential from the unessential and was excellent at managing and controlling things. He also had long experience. After his professor and mentor Eugen Fischer* retired, they could not have found a more energetic and ambitious man for the delicate job of running the world-famous institute.

One might say he had the proper education and expertise to take the helm.

Of course, his appointment would not have been even considered had his origin, traced back to the distant past, not been pure Aryan. He instinctively kept his distance from racist groups because of his deep contempt for the hoi polloi, and he favored neither absolutism nor anarchy, although he had an aversion to the physical proximity or even spiritual presence of Jewish persons. The characteristic traits of Jewish thinking disturbed his composure and indeed his entire mentality — their penchant for emotional exaggeration, their spectacular ideas, their fiery gesticulations, their scientific bluster, their effeminate features, and their hedonism — but he never talked to anyone about these reactions of his and in fact fought them heroically, mustering the full power of his Christian conscience, as if he were trying not to feel toward Jews what he felt about people beneath his rank, and he was loathe to wind up being influenced by other people’s extreme expressions.

On his maternal side, he came from a noble Baltic family, on his father’s side from a no less ancient clan in Kurhessen, whose men traditionally became members of Hesse’s order of knighthood, the Althessischer Ritterschaft. His father had often taken him down in the mines, which were frightening but where they would walk for miles; Sundays were the days for these shared excursions, after church and before the traditionally late lunch. In mine baskets powered by horse-driven winches, they would be lowered hundreds of meters underground, and he learned, from his father’s instructions and also from the pressure he felt at the top of his skull and in his lungs, to gauge how far down they were at any given time. Heat and darkness ruled, yet strong, cool airstreams blew; the beams and support poles creaked in the silence. Dampness dripped everywhere but in some places water gushed in torrents only to vanish with strange gurgles into openings that looked like gullets of hell; at other places abandoned strippings might suddenly shift, with rubble slipping and slamming noisily into the tipcarts.

The family was not simply in the business of mining; it exercised the Schuers’ ancient mining rights.

Otmar and his siblings spent their childhood summers on their maternal grandfather’s estate, where early on, and not only in the mines but also on the land itself, the children learned how and why they should control and take care of others for the sake of their own family. The art of disciplining and being disciplined captured the boy’s imagination, one might say. This is why he felt a strong calling for a military career. He was lucky: just after he was graduated from school, the war broke out, and in September 1914, on the memorable day when news came from the western front that in the face of relentless German attacks, Albert, king of the Belgians, had been forced to abandon his carefully guarded fortifications in Antwerp, Otmar was able, in the company of other noble and enthusiastic youth — oh, how they would have loved to have been there at the siege of the fortresses! and then the road to Paris is free! — to join the Gersdorff Rifle Regiment of Hessen as a Junker ensign. It hardly needs mentioning that he was a volunteer, thrilled no end not only by deep patriotic feelings but also by the peculiar circumstance that had several hundred young men from the best families stripping to their birthday suits simultaneously in order to appear in that condition before the health commission.

This was the first time for any of them that they had to stand so closely together, exposed to one another’s gaze in a mass of similar skin colors and bundles of muscles. Once they were free of their clothes, silence reigned in the enormous hall, the silence of bashfulness. At the news of successive victories, crowds of people gathered on the street outside, exulting and celebrating; complete strangers hugged and kissed. In the hall, the young men smelled one another in silence, and the thought occurred to most of them that from now on they knew something about one another that no one else did.

Countess Auenberg was thinking how much the renowned scientist, with his conspicuous physical attributes, his build, the sensitivity of his features, and his incredible strength, not to mention his seriousness and levelheadedness, reminded her of her fiancé. She sighed to herself, my, my, a truly experienced man, a man’s man. The resemblance caught her off guard. But Mihály was much kinder. He had nothing to hide. And he was more open; but of course he was, since he had nothing to hide. At least, once the thought occurred to her, she hoped he didn’t.

She couldn’t stop comparing all the young men who came into her view with him.

Yet in vain did she tip the balance to Mihály’s advantage, because she couldn’t deny that she felt a similar attraction to male bodies she judged to be similar to his.

Her strong attraction to Mihály, demonstrating which was frustrated by prevailing etiquette, had often shaken her physically and made her dizzy for long minutes. The reason the same attraction failed to seize her now, a feeling she would certainly have found out of place, was that they had brought with them some of the coolness of the church’s interior. Occasionally, it was enough merely to think of Mihály and she’d ask for a chair or a glass of water. As if she were not totally there, at the place where in fact she was. As if it were not she who saw and sensed the other person. As if her conscience unexpectedly claimed that she sensed their identical being by her physical attraction, even though she knew well — vehemently protesting her own thought — that this was but an illusion, a sensory error, surely nothing else.

Just because she missed him so, after only two days she did not suspect him.

Or this strange man.

Schuer indeed deserved the accolades due his sex; he was indeed a man’s man. He had been seriously wounded twice in 1917 in the western campaign, on battlefields in Flanders, and once earlier, with lighter wounds, at the siege of Gorlice, in Galicia, and on all three occasions he had received the silver medal for valor, along with the title vitéz; for exceptional bravery, he had also been awarded the Iron Cross Second Class and First Class. At the end of the war he was honorably discharged with the rank of captain. Then, in truth, he was obliged to hide his experiences — Countess Imola was not mistaken about that — and his mind was much tortured by what he had to hide, even though he seemed to lead an orderly, cloudless life with his wife and three children in the sunny and lovingly tended directorial villa on Ihne Street.

With Germany’s enormous wartime collapse, he had to give up his plans for a military career, had to abandon the flag to which he had pledged eternal allegiance in the summer of 1914; he had no choice, he could not have continued. His earlier convictions evaporated or, rather, deserted him. Yet even after two decades, his war experiences pursued him in the form of menacing images, not picturelike images but mostly visions and apparitions. He could never tell whether he saw, imagined, or only envisioned in his memory the impact of the bomb that had lifted the torso of his machine gunner, along with muddy clumps of earth spraying the sky, high into the air from a spot now emptied and exuding only heat, and, while the torn-off arms flew off in different directions, the gunner’s trunk, pared down to its bare frame but still alive, was skewered on a tree branch.

Had that really happened; had he in fact seen it.

Put another way, fear of insanity quietly, almost imperceptibly transformed his patriotism, and his strict upbringing has not allowed him to speak of this terrible renunciation to this day, not even with his friends.

He has hardly any friends.

Because he could not afford to engage in what he might rightfully have assumed to be friendship.

On the one hand, a feeling of friendship doesn’t pick and choose solely among people of the same rank, or according to rank or title. On the other hand, neither religion nor tradition can explain the shy physical tenderness and cruel physical brutality he had seen and profoundly experienced in water-soaked trenches, among barbed-wire obstacles, in the miserable barracks of military hospitals, and in overheated whorehouses reeking of tobacco in small Galician towns. Everything was beyond what could be measured by any social standard. When he returned, neither his mother, coming toward him in her clouds of perfume, nor his father, having in his model austerity grown very thin, could have known anything about the wild animals dazed with hunger and thirst who wandered aimlessly in forests razed bare by bombs, and about the camaraderie patched together out of cruelty and brotherly feeling — yet their youngest son had seen it all and lived through it all.

Regarding him, they became unsuspecting.

He could not but feel that with his war experiences, with everything he had done for the homeland, he was basely misleading his parents, and that with the moral state of his inner life he was deeply disappointing them. He could not play the good boy for them much longer. He carried with him everywhere his life of lost innocence. Which is to say, he did not understand how he might come to love, passionately and irresponsibly, another person of any rank or sex — an injured comrade or an unkempt Ukrainian whore whom he twice used, with their smell, their weeks-old stench — if at the next moment he could hand them over to death without a second thought. He could not get over the dreadful shadows of his own bravery and steadfastness, over the mass slaughter that he had participated in from start to finish and that, for the first time in the history of warfare, technology had required as a condition for military victory. He always had to be conducting something — given his responsibility to others he had no choice — but what happened never turned out to be what he had intended. When five years later he returned to his completely unfamiliar civilian life, where to his great surprise everything was predictable, his difficulty was not in forgetting the fallen or the images of hand-to-hand combat, but in being unable to forget those of his own comrades who had been maimed by bullets and whom no one could help, or those who had gone insane and whom he had to shoot or have shot.

Willi, for example, who for two difficult years had been his orderly and whom he had been calling sweet little Willi ever since, even though the resourceful, round-faced, always grinning peasant from Eifel had been everything but sweet. He ate human flesh and not because he was hungry; he was fascinated by the taste and offered it to everyone, since they all, being cut off from their supplies, were starving; he did this because he had gone mad, or he went mad because he ate human flesh. Sometimes, when he was lost in these thoughts, Baroness Erika had to raise her voice and call her husband two or three times before he realized she had been invoking his name.

The barrel of the pistol raised for firing probably sobered up the madman for at least a second; with his arms spread wide, he clung to the slippery wall of the dugout, his alert eyes sparkling, hoping that Baron von der Schuer would not do it.

Not to him.

The baroness had to call him ever more loudly until he finally came around and not only saw but knew where he was. Luckily, the naturally lively little woman probably thought her husband was preoccupied with some scientific question. In fact, his thoughts ventured into areas not yet illuminated by the sciences precisely because he had been thinking of scientific questions.

He was looking for the basis on which he could build his science.

That he was a nobleman, scion of an ancient clan, raised to behave honorably and chivalrously, and that he had been entrusted with the lives and fate of others — these facts had lost their purpose and significance in the war he had left behind. There, bare undisguised fear of death ruled, a mere desire to survive; no discipline or self-discipline could spare anyone’s body from it.

He had not been afraid; his body was afraid in his stead. He began to search for God in this bodily fear, sitting inside the fear, desperate and full of doubts; he searched for God so that in the blood, snow, mud, and feverish shivering he should not falter or go insane.

In the mass fear and suffering, God seemed very different from the God of his hours of childhood gullibility and adolescent rebellion. This God probably had no place in human events, and for Him to be absent He did not have to leave the stumps of bombed-out trees or bodies abandoned in their pain. In the absence of gullibility, Schuer wanted first to understand the body — easily offended, exposed to desires, subject to feelings, in which it is so simple to silence or snuff out reason and soul. For theological reasons he had confidence in the sciences of human anatomy and biology. He was interested in the body’s mechanics and chemistry; he had confidence, one might say, only in his apostate mind’s ability to reach a higher sense of bodily functions and then, perhaps, to find a god higher in rank or more ancient than the God of Christianity. He had once enjoyed reading Silesius, and because of him he fantasized about the god who lived separately in individual bodies, about traces of this god that had been left in each organism and could be measured by natural-scientific or mathematical means. He wanted to find that quality which everyone chatters irresponsibly about because it’s the primal reason for everyone’s existence, but which has no palpable sign either in history or in any form of man-made matter. He was so confident that in the body he would find this ancient sign, a trace of its origin, that he was ready to transfer his faith and conscience to science.

In this state of mind he enrolled in the medical school of the University of Marburg, where, after a few months spent in spiritual daydreams and mental convalescence, he could not avoid being entrusted again with a military mission. There might have been other candidates suited to the job — in those postwar semesters the student population was swarming with demobilized soldiers — yet they made him the commander’s adjutant because he had spent the most time in a staff position and in combat. General Walther Baron von Lüttwitz* was himself considered a very good-looking man, and he insisted on Schuer. He had kept his eye on this attractive, wealthy young man from a splendid family; frankly, he wouldn’t have minded if his daughter married him. As if he were saying to himself, yes, I would like to have my grandchildren come from this bright-faced, slightly indolent fellow. He evaluated the young man’s physical attributes with the reckoning of an experienced horse breeder. He was very proud that in his own case, past fifty, his muscles remained not only hard but also boyishly supple.

When a communist uprising began in Thuringia, at Lüttwitz’s wish Schuer, alongside his commander, led units of the Studentenkorps against them. Lüttwitz expected a lot from the difference in the condition of the two leaders’ musculature. Sometimes he’d grasp Schuer firmly by the shoulder, pat and squeeze him, or press his hard arms to feel what he saw. The homeland faces the greatest danger, godless civil war, brother against brother, as he put it in a famous public address. Armed bandits plunder, pillage and fornicate, murder, rob, ransack, and set things afire in ancient German cities.

Of which not one word was true.

In hours of need, everyone should suspend all personal concerns and devote everything to the cause of the nation.

Schuer did not have to suspend his personal concerns; on the contrary, in his heart he was happy about his new assignment, which he was to carry out alongside Frigate Captain Baron von Selchow, only a few years older than he. It offered him a good pretext, his intellectual doubts and devastating loneliness notwithstanding, to enter military service again and, on an apparently not too dangerous excursion, to reimmerse himself in a familiar milieu of simpler, rougher things.

Though cleansing operations and methodical house searches were not exactly to his liking, after the suppression of the rebellion and the temperate carrying out of the inevitable retaliations, he received the Large Cross, decorated with a saber, of the Order of the Lions of Zähring, Germany’s highest decoration for a soldier.

He could thank Lüttwitz’s silent intervention for this.

This police venture — it could hardly be called a military operation — which ended by early April with very few losses to his men, brought about a thorough change in Schuer’s life. Once the Spartacist uprising had been put down and republican forces throughout Germany had triumphed over the mostly monarchist advocates of a coup d’état, the Weimar authorities charged Lüttwitz with a long list of terrible crimes. To avoid arrest, he and his family escaped to Budapest, where the godless reds were routed by August and there was no fear of republican rule.

In truth, the change had already occurred on the early March afternoon when previously established units, six companies to be exact, assembled in orderly columns under Schuer’s single command, wearing their new pike-gray uniforms without stripes or chevrons, marched smartly on the Marbach highway to the Dammelberg. That is when, almost imperceptibly, many things changed in his life; thanks to some vision or realization, as it were, he found his ultimate vocation. They lit enormous fires, they sang as loudly and energetically as their throats would allow. Although his musicality, honed on several instruments, did not go to the point of his singing along with his men — he merely mouthed the words feelingly — Schuer unreservedly entrusted his body to the waves of shared sensual intemperance, while, his eyes blinded by the light of enormous fires, he observed the fields sunk in mist from the nearby river and the twilight-reddened walls and turrets of the imposing fortified castle of Landgraf, surveying simultaneously, as it were, the living, the historical, and the lifeless. The warm sensation of his left-behind but oft-missed wartime life returned generously to his limbs.

There were hardly any greenhorns among them. Almost all the men were officers, war veterans, athletic, strong, and healthy men who had survived their wounds and now wanted to study or to continue their scientific careers, which the war had interrupted.

Never again did he feel abandoned or alone with his wartime experiences.

He saw clearer than daylight that he hardly differed from these men in anything, and that was his good fortune.

He belonged, though in all probability had no individuality.

Or perhaps what liberal thinkers call one’s individuality in fact plays but a very small part in nature’s grand scheme. In itself, individuality probably isn’t worth a grain of rice. Among these wonderful men, individuality makes a difference hardly worth mentioning.

We are but samples, he thought with no small amount of fright.

In reality, the chosen ones of nature and divine Providence. Not only fit for reproduction — our dead would have been no less fit for that — but the most deserving of this purpose from a racial viewpoint, if one may put it that way, and all this has nothing to do with the individual soul or individual peculiarities. Who else should be multiplying if not these men who had withstood the crucible and survived.

What else could Providence have wanted when it so mercilessly destroyed our weaker mates.

This soul-stirring, painful realization overpowered him, though the great smoke and infernal noise might have played a part. In a nature suffused by divine Providence the theory of natural selection works more brutally than the power of Christian charity. Within decades, this brutal reality will turn Germany’s devastating defeat into a universal victory. And under the influence of this realization these magnificent men became for him like members of a blood alliance sworn to secrecy: the future of the nation may be entrusted to the contents of their loins.

He became alarmed at this pagan thought, but could not help thinking that the ancient God who cast off His Christian charity loved those whom He decimated.

Was not the treasure of the Holy Grail a secret code of advantageous racial characteristics, he asked himself, and he had no doubt about the answer.

Or rather, it seemed to him that God had taken off His Christian mask before him and would never again show His barbaric face to anyone. He shuddered to imagine seeing God face-to-face. Blessed be He, he would have said to himself, but right now he could neither pray nor express his gratitude; he could only think, very rapidly.

He was counting.

Altogether two generations, four at the most, and we’ll come out of this ignominy stronger than those who suffered fewer losses and who with their flawed individuals are now lording it over us. The enormity of this realization made him falter, he had to lean on someone, and an unknown mate standing next to him instinctively hugged him, held him up with his strong shoulders.

Among noblemen, behavior like this was not a matter of course.

He felt gratitude toward his mate and more profound love than toward any woman, or than the love he should feel as a Christian toward a helpful fellow being.

When the fires had burned down to smoldering embers, the beer was running low, or the men were becoming short-winded or somehow seized by sorrow over the lost war and terrible peace, and suddenly they felt surrounded by memories of their fallen comrades, they formed a huge circle, standing shoulder to shoulder, opened the slits of their pants, triumphantly and ostentatiously thrust forward their hips to honor the ancient Germanic custom of high-arced cross-pissing before setting out on their dangerous mission, which demanded much good luck.

Contrary to all his earlier vows to preserve his seed until the day he found the person worthy of it, whom he would marry, as was only proper, that night, for the first time since his demobilization, Schuer went with the other men to a brothel. He knew he was breaking his vows, but he excused himself on the grounds that he was doing so not for himself but because of the others. He did think of the Lüttwitz girl, the charming and educated Andria, but felt no special pangs on her account. He knew and no longer had any doubts that Willi had had to perish at his hand because of Providence, so that only the strong and mentally healthy would stay alive. He was repelled by the thought of having to marry a girl with a congenital hip dislocation just because of the obligatory propriety prevailing among his peers, and now, for the first time in his life, he accepted his revulsion. Willi was backing away from him, backing away and looking at him as he walked cheerfully with the others on the nighttime street, quietly dreading a future that he happened to be avoiding. I could not have done anything else then, and I cannot do anything else now. He no longer had to justify or feel ashamed about his natural revulsion at the cripple.

What happened to Willi hurt him more than what would happen to Andria, left to her fate.

That last lucid moment on the dirty face, its human flesh fried to a sooty black; that last look on his sweetly, trustingly shining face.

He felt that his terrific climax in a randomly selected woman was due to the tremendous strength and magical joy of belonging among survivors, and he ejaculated into her with a hitherto never experienced intensity.

He screamed and bellowed in the messy bed of the woman’s cubbyhole reeking with face powder and bleach, just as he had when being prepared for the removal of a bullet from his shoulder and the surgeon suggested that he not bite his lip, which would only damage more flesh, which he’d have to stitch up, that he not hold back but let all the pain pour out, but that he not move.

I told you not to move, Lieutenant, damn it.

In his infernal pleasure, his entire being was possessed by awareness of a power linking him to other people’s bodies. He knew well that neither the loins nor the unpleasant perfume of the cheap little woman from Marburg had anything to do with it. Because at the instant of ejaculation males freeze and do not move. Or rather, such a shattering gratification could have happened only in her, in such a depraved woman, whose hastily rinsed vagina was still sloppy with someone else’s seed — no denying that. The shock was so intense and so unprecedented, and he was drained for so many hours, that he wanted to know what had happened, or what was happening at times like this in the impassively functioning universe.

And he remained consistent throughout his subsequent scientific activities in his efforts to clarify this question.

In such activities, one becomes stuck on Creation, as if nailed to eternity.

As an experiment, the night before deployment, when the cars of the train were being hooked up and the freight wagons packed, almost a thousand volunteer students, horses, fodder, machine guns, and fourteen cannons ready to start for Thuringia at dawn on March 19, as if going to the front, Schuer went back to the woman, who was happy to see him, but the shocking pleasure could not be repeated. It became the usual forced, dull little gratification and in the circumstances humiliating rather than pleasurable — almost identical with those pale sensations, barely rising above the monotony of thrusts, that later accompanied him throughout his marriage.

However dubious this may sound, this turned out to be his first successful, though isolated and inconclusive, anthropological experiment.

When the students returned from Thuringia to the university in April, he once again stole into the brothel, as if to hide his scientific passion from himself, but he did not find the woman. The rest of the girls there, strangely, kept quiet. As if trying to avoid answering him, as if not hearing what this young man, a medical student well known in the city, was so curious about.

Or they could not comprehend what more he wanted when everything was already at his disposal.

The Order of the Lions of Zähring, its medal a numismatic rarity, worn by its recipients on a green-gold brocade ribbon on their dress uniforms or on immaculate shirtfronts when they were in tailcoats, had been founded a century earlier by the grand duke of Baden, Karl Ludwig. The chancellery appointed to grant the award commissioned Moscow’s most famous jeweler, Fabergé, to design and make the medal; later on Le MaÎtre too made a few exquisite samples in Paris that were perhaps more beautiful than their predecessors; and the requisite ribbons were always woven in the Venice workshop of the Montenuovo princes. The medal itself was made of finely and fastidiously combined elements: a lacy frame made of red and yellow gold imitated bizarre converging acanthus leaves and gave the impression of a jewel; on this frame was a cross, enameled with molten green glass and lined on both sides with silver foil, at the center of which, on a beautifully cambered heraldic shield decorated with hair-thin strands of spun gold, one could see a tiny masterpiece of enamel painting. The incredibly detailed miniature, painted under a magnifying glass, depicted the ruins of the Zährings’ fortified castle, richly overgrown with centuries of vegetation. They referred to it as their family castle, but it was a feared medieval eyrie, the kind of fortress surrounded by thick bastions that is believed to be impregnable and impossible to take. Obviously the award had to signify that lo and behold its valiant recipient had managed to prevent total ruination against all odds.

On the reverse of the cross, on the shield decorated with spun gold, the embossed miniature of a muscular rearing lion was depicted.

It became clear to Schuer — perhaps he concluded this from inexplicable signs — that the poor woman from Marburg must have killed herself, slit her veins or drunk caustic soda, who knows, so he could not count on further experimentation. For a long time he toyed with this notion — that she had committed suicide because of him. That she had done so because of the extreme and merciful good that Schuer had been compelled to experience in her specifically and in most ignominious circumstances. He was very curious to know whether the woman had experienced the same thing. After all, it was for that knowledge of hers that he wanted to return to her, he kept telling himself. And why would she not experience the same thing with him, even though she’d shown no signs of it. He wanted to know. Was the extent of pleasure a function of personal characteristics or a mechanism to ensure the dynamics and frequency of the reproductive act — thus disconnecting, or lifting, the individual from the system of his or her own characteristics. This question truly excited him.

For more than a century the grand duchy’s chancellery had debated its choices in the greatest anonymity. Given the delicate nature of the matter, to make their decision they needed information from as many sources as possible, and checked as thoroughly as possible. The candidates not only had to have accomplished exceptional military feats that helped to protect the country from ruin, but also had to be men of flawless reputation, which would guarantee that they would never disgrace the respectable knightly order. Otmar Baron von der Schuer not only had the reputation of being such a man but, despite some weaknesses and occasional lapses, was such a man.

The one thing that might have induced the chancellery to further deliberation would have been knowledge of Schuer’s regular visits to the brothel.

And as he had never done before, driven by the desire to remain faultless and to assuage his inauspicious announcement well in advance, he now placed his hand on Baroness Thum zu Wolkenstein’s arm, richly encased in fluttering white silk. A gesture in which there was a touch of unpardonable condescension; a well-bred person would not behave like this with his peers.

The baroness was not, in her origins, socially inferior to Schuer, nor was she a woman without means, but in conformity with her scientific activity and puritan inclinations she usually dressed very simply, sometimes not even elegantly but in a plain skirt and blouse. Now, however, she wore an intricately collared shirtwaist with puffed sleeves reminiscent of national costumes and wide cuffs at the wrists; it was quite fashionable, as was her slender, slightly bell-shaped skirt of raw silk, slit high on the sides, which gave her a girlish silhouette. She had made an effort today because she did not wish to be underdressed when with the countess. It was part of her dressing peculiarities that she never wore jewelry now, but she purchased the finest and most expensive shoes and handbags, which she selected fastidiously and in great quantities. She knew no moderation in this, for she adored odd and whimsical items on her hands and feet.

It seemed that the strange men in the Lützow Street bar also knew about this passion of hers, the men who grabbed her legs and felt them up in the dim reddish light of the private room. Not only the plush seats but also the walls and the ceiling of the Boîte Rouge were covered with red velvet, and there was hardly any lighting. They held her arms, their strong fingers made their way up from her ankles and down to her elbows, but she did not let them touch her breasts.

Which did not occur by chance but because of the shame she felt about her excitement.

But at this moment the baron’s unpardonably intimate gesture was not meant for her; it was his way of introducing himself to the Hungarian countess. As if he wished to initiate the woman stranger in the depths of his tenderness, even if with his gesture he was suggesting depths to which he had never descended since to his great sorrow he had never been able to love anyone, though he had seen with his own eyes people who were capable of it, even of mutual love.

The hand that Baroness Thum’s arm could not forget even hours later was a comfortably heavy, strong hand.

As opposed to her older friend, the Hungarian countess was dressed with heart-warming elegance. Lately the darling of diplomatic circles for being the betrothed of the regent’s son, she had arrived in Berlin two days earlier at the invitation of Emmy Göhring,* that truly charming grand patron of the arts. As part of her semi-official visit, and accompanied by Emmy and other highly placed ladies, the countess was supposed to drop in on Arno Breker at his imposingly large studio in Käuzchensteig to view the sculptor’s latest monumental nudes.* One might say the countess was unrelenting in her pursuit of cosmopolitan elegance, and in her own country this was considered a kind of muted political stance. She felt that a certain social extravagance was obligatory, and to society’s great surprise her future mother-in-law, Her Excellency the wife of the regent, enthusiastically supported her in this view. In Berlin, where her peers painfully preserved a semblance of modesty in their severe two-piece suits, sincerely hoping that they wouldn’t be charged with bowing to cosmopolitanism, she had a powerful sense of her provocative youthfulness and her obstinacy in matters of taste.

As if even with her extravagant wardrobe she intended to emphasize the semi-official character of her visit.

Count Svoy, the protocol chief of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, in a private conversation had given her to understand what was expected of her.

The count had most unpleasant-smelling breath and, in addition, the bad habit of leaning too close to his interlocutor to emphasize the confidential nature of his words. His country will not restrict its own freedom or relinquish its spiritual independence because of the two nations’ allied relationship or because of charming Madame Göhring. A statement that the countess, leaning back almost more than was possible in her armchair, understood well and endorsed wholeheartedly. Or at least, we preserve appearances in tune with our own foreign-policy interests. Now, peering out from under her mauve straw hat decorated with gently fluttering plumes, impudently pulled down on her brow, she followed Schuer’s daring gesture with lively interest and some repugnance.

The familiarity revealed to her more of the two persons’ tense and complicated relationship than they would have wanted to know or let the outside world notice. After such a moving sermon, continued Schuer in a much lower tone, in a voice adjusted to the intimacy of the gesture, one no doubt feels the urge to unburden one’s soul.

I’m sure this is understandable, he added.

Then again he interrupted his own apparently polite but rather absentminded sentence with a peremptory wave of his hand to indicate that he expected both women for lunch and hastily turned his back to join his family, which had been swept to the margins of the throng.

Daring, daring, stirring, an enthralling man, Countess Auenberg remarked, not without an edge to her voice, while with their gloved hands they both waved cordial good-byes over people’s heads to Baroness Erika, Schuer’s wife.

I guess you never know where you stand with him.

The sky above Berlin that day was brilliantly and cloudlessly blue.

No doubt, replied Baroness Thum with a slightly exaggerated severity, he is a stirring and unpredictable man, that’s true, but it would not be advisable to forget for even a moment that above all he is a wonderful scientist with a clear, brilliant mind, and therefore one can forgive him for many things.

And before they started off together on the shady street fragrant with the smell of pines, the baroness stole one more fleeting glance at the countess’s face shining with youth and health, to see whether Schuer’s rude manners had insulted her guest. It had been rumored that the Horthy boy, Mihály, would be elected Hungary’s king, and then this young friend, who was also best friends with Geraldine, queen of Albania, and because of that friendship already a frequent visitor in European courts, would herself become a queen.

And you know, she said with a small, raspy laugh, which resonated both with self-mockery and with admiration bordering on hatred for her boss, I can’t help myself, his manly beauty never fails to move me.

I could not help noticing that it affected you too, she added cautiously.

From under her hat Countess Auenberg gave her a rather inquiring glance, for she had unerringly caught the jealous edge and intention of the remark.

How can you say such a thing, how can you even think such a thing, she replied reproachfully, though not without some self-irony or defiance.

I don’t want to know what you think.

Oh, please forgive me. I’ve been carried away by my own lack of restraint.

Lack of restraint was a delicate subject for many reasons, and just as frequently as they managed to avoid it, they also fell into its trap. The two women were deeply devoted to each other, the girl to the grown woman and, oddly, the mature woman to the younger one. Which they both felt was unusual, and which they accounted for by the great difference in their ages and experiences. On the one hand Countess Auenberg and her two sisters had been small children when their pitiless mother left them; she’d run away with a trickster and they never saw her again; she and the trickster were allegedly living somewhere abroad in very modest circumstances. And on the other hand Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein had been blessed with a son conceived in a very early love affair, and ever since the little boy’s birth had been living in strict scientific seclusion, as if in continual penitence; she always found a place for the child, never giving up hope that one day her family would forgive her. For these reasons, neither of them thought silly and pointless sentiments were permissible, and naturally they did not speak of them — although there wasn’t much they could do about them. From the first moment of their friendship they had a secret language, and in their quiet, persistent rebellions, which they indulged in as a counter to their lack of restraint, they revealed much to each other in this language.

If I may be candid with you, Countess Imola said quietly.

I count on nothing but, said Baroness Karla dryly.

All right, his physique is pleasing, his mouth is beautiful, I grant you, and there’s something disarming in his facial expression too, as if he were looking into your depths and seeing your little feminine thoughts, but his nose, if I may put it this way, must cause alarm in everyone, in me it was real panic.

The baroness gave her a look. His nose of all features, his nose.

To be honest, I don’t understand your enthusiasm.

Of all his features you object to his nose, I’m very surprised, Imola — why deny it, I’m astounded. And how peculiar you are about the nose of your betrothed, my God, what do you want with all this. Yesterday, how thoroughly you described to me your future father-in-law’s snub nose. Involuntarily she thought of the red of the Boîte and the pretty little ivory godemiché; a mysterious good friend had made this his parting gift, as if to say that from now on she’d have to worry about her pleasures on her own.

He had vanished from her life the same way he had suddenly appeared in it.

Papa Miklós has a kindly nose, yes.

In that case, I must have misunderstood your annoyance.

It’s possible, obviously. That must have been it.

It sounds strange, it sounds more suspicious with every word. You’re acting very strangely today.

Deep in their own oppressive thoughts, a little bruised by each other, they walked on, silent against the pattering of their high heels.

She kept the little Chinese godemiché, shiny with centuries of use, in her bedroom, in the Chinese writing cabinet that could be locked.

But the association of ideas confused her, because compared to the angelic being clip-clopping next to her, who was obviously rushing unstoppably to her doom, she thought of herself as a deeply depraved person.

Someone looking back from the far side of the abyss of fateful things.

Don’t take this amiss now, said the countess, her voice both passionate and calculating, it’s as if he had not a nose but a trunk, a beak. It grows straight out of his forehead, she said, blustering because she was struggling with real emotions. She had to overcome her attraction to him at all cost so as not to endanger others’ attraction to her, which was more important to her than anything.

As if it were the beak of a marabou, he’s ready to stick it in you, or of a penguin, certainly not a human nose.

Big bird, she cried.

She has been observing Countess Auenberg for more than ten years.

Each time it surprised her anew what an enormous amount of destructive hatred this delicate, exceedingly intelligent being — blessed with an angelic figure and impectable manners — must deflect and stave off with the help of social conventions. How she must be raging inside. And this forced her to think once again of her own sensual life, condemned to muteness. Yet there was nothing personal in Imola’s raging, she remained truly naïve. Baron von der Schuer, whom she had just met, could not have elicited and did not deserve her concentrated hatred.

These obviously inherited neurotic symptoms were clear to the baroness.

Poor thing: these Auenbergs are capable of flying into rages over the most trivial things and in the most unexpected situations.

Being a bit taller and stronger than Imola, she looked down cautiously at her.

Lest she confuse her even more with pity.

And then she became angry with this silly pitiable girl; despite all her understanding and forgiving she became angry with her. She wants to take this man away from her; for that, the little one would have the finesse, wouldn’t she. She became so angry she almost began to rage herself, her own family’s neurosis being characterized by a dangerous absence of an ability to relinquish tranquillity and discrimination.

What a viper.

She is trying with her words to ruin, to pulverize my attraction to him, which I need for my career if for nothing else.

What a sharp little tongue she has. She is picking at me with her sharp little tongue.

Although she still felt the weight of Schuer’s hand on her arm, she knew that beyond their common scientific interest she had no chance with him. This stupid uneducated socialite beauty would have plenty of chances, however.

And she also had to acknowledge that no matter how many names she had called her — dizzy hen, silly goose, whatever — the woman was not stupid.

Sometimes we women are frightened by significant symbols of raw vitality, she replied considerately, as if she were ready, despite her excessive emotion, to protect the younger though probably no longer untouched woman, but there’s no need to blame anyone for this. Think about it, whom can you blame for a certain kind of nose. Come, my dear, don’t be so childish.

A veritable freak, the countess cried, hysterical and not to be calmed, as if with neurotic strength she would avenge the emotional injuries she had suffered a moment earlier.

If you ask me, he probably has other bodily deformities too, he must have, believe me, this man is hiding something.

And I know what it is, she exclaimed at last, enraged and almost desperate.

They burst out laughing at this, which satisfied them both. They naturally laughed with the same malevolent little-girlish joy; after all, they were laughing about a showy, self-satisfied man, and behind his back.

What a little devil you are, and you don’t even know what you’re talking about, my dear, said the Baroness Thum, laughing so hard that tears came to her eyes.

And the little devilry bound them together with a special strength. They would never behave like this with other people.

As usual you don’t know, how could you possibly, she said, and, clicking open the clasp of her wonderful little snakeskin handbag to take out her batiste handkerchief and blot her tears, she put on a deceitfully dreamy face to indicate that she was not ready to give away all her secrets.

Believe me, the corner of her mouth seemed to say, there are plenty of them.

In the meantime, her soul nearly froze with the pleasure-filled image. Her great scientific rival, at whose hands she had suffered defeat after defeat, might have on his body some carefully concealed and embarrassing abnormality. Because of which he should have had himself sterilized long ago instead of bestowing three children on the world.

This had never occurred to her.

He has three nipples. I will count his teeth. Maybe he’s got two sets of testicles.

Which this ugly little witch feels or notices better than I do.

Well, that’s wonderful, she cried.

I know it’s not proper to talk about things like this with you, the countess continued, enjoying the way she could show her worst side to Karla. As a matter of fact, it’s not proper to do it with anyone, but I can’t help it.

Fortunately Karla was able to cover her profile with the handkerchief while blotting tears from the corners of her eyes perhaps a little too carefully.

On the contrary, she answered, charmed by the countess’s openness, our famous science, my dear, consists of nothing but our debating just such questions and proposing all sorts of dubious hypotheses. This is what we are certified for, my dear, if I may put it that way. God creates many deformities and bodily abnormalities, and we carefully collect them, categorize and label them. Of course God did not specify what the norms of perfection were and we have no way of knowing whether he deposited them somewhere. Maybe it won’t interest you, but Schuer wrote his postdoctoral thesis on this very subject, and our bloodiest arguments are over questions of pathology. Ever since then, he’s been publishing the same paper over and over in all the racial-biological textbooks, to the point of becoming ridiculous.

Well, I shouldn’t burden you with this.

But you can believe me that every person is a freak, deformed from birth. If you take a closer look at them, you can see it with your own eyes.

Veritable monsters.

You can’t be so innocent as not to have noticed.

Only we are perfect and flawless, the two of us, cried the countess with painful pleasure, because she understood only too well what the other woman was talking about, and at this moment Baroness Thum indeed saw her as beautiful.

Which instantly made her feel younger and more slender herself, despite her torments of neediness and guilt feelings. She wanted to shout and protest, no, no, alas, alas, we’re not more perfect or more flawless than other people; it was part of her scientific credo that inherited deformities were intrinsic to a person’s beauty and indispensable for truly exceptional talent, which is why she opposed the sterilization of flawed individuals that Schuer approved and encouraged. She thought the practice of selection on the basis of racial biology and genetics was a crime against the German people, its consequences unpredictably destructive for the entire Nordic race. At most she approved of euthanasia for a much smaller part of the population, and certainly the deformed and mentally ill were to be kept from reproducing.

At most, making them disappear, putting them out of sight, which would eliminate superfluous expenses.

But she kept quiet, gave no voice to her scientific arguments.

Who else could be more beautiful, she cried with painful pleasure, as they gazed at each other, delighting in the reality of the person their eyes beheld.

I wouldn’t allow myself to say something like this to anyone else, said the countess quietly, almost somberly.

I believe you, I believe almost everything you say, my dear, said the baroness, though she was inexplicably irritated after their blissful harmony of the moment earlier. But I’d like to know how you came up with this foolishness.

Her silent admirer appeared to her in his physical reality, the one who with a certain regularity gratified her in the red-velvet room, while other men, total strangers emerging from the dimness, ran their fingers all over her spread legs and her bare arms raised above her head, but he never physically made her his own, never.

Even though, judging by the signs, he was not impotent.

The flavor of this dark adventure came from this insane lack.

Lack filled her life and made preparation for the one enormous gratification more exciting.

As if with her earlier comment, she had opened the gates and water was now rushing toward her uncontrollably.

What she knew of the man were his lips and his tongue. She made their acquaintance on her vagina, held open by her fingers, or on her clitoris; and she was also familiar with the peculiar fragrance of his bald head, damp with perspiration, as it rose from her loins; that, and nothing more.

Yet she penetrated the depth of the man’s passion; they shared their passion.

She let him do anything, but she would never touch her admirer. As if she were afraid that he would crumble to dust in her fingers. Occasionally, she would grab the strange men in his stead, the men who in the red darkness offered her their services, their hands, lips and tongues, and also their penises.

I’d be much obliged if you told me the sources of your information, she continued, still annoyed.

What information do you have in mind.

Where did you get it.

Get what.

Maybe I misunderstood you.

I rather think that I do not understand you.

But of course you do, you little beast.

What you say surprises me, I find your choice of words unwarranted, but I guess you’re no less a monster than I am.

They understood each other so well that they now, at this juncture of their conversation, faltered in enjoyable dread. Karla blushed — to her core, she felt — given the emotions and memories evoked by the loudly spoken words.

Obviously neither of them knew where to go from here.

You can’t be serious, said the countess, her voice gliding even higher than its usual high, sharp little-girl pitch, when you say you know him so intimately.

What are you talking about, said the baroness, becoming more entangled in her own blushing, you’re the one who spoke as if you knew the secrets of his body.

How could I, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him in my life.

They stopped, simultaneously, on the shady side of the sunlit street.

There was silence between them, the baroness did not respond or give any sign, and in the great Sunday serenity only the twittering of wrens could be heard in the distance.

In fact, Countess Auenberg didn’t want to know the answer to the question she had asked or at least implied.

Shameless, how can anyone be so shameless, grumbled Baroness Thum, rather enjoying the impasse.

Yet Imola did want to ask the older woman what might happen to her in married life. In this regard, the previous day’s visit to the atelier had quite upset her. She was not very young anymore, twenty-two years old; she needed to know many things about the male sex in general. She needed objective information. If there was such a thing. Would Karla tell her in detail what Mihály might do to her. There is no way of knowing such things. How should a woman give herself to a man without seeming to be either cold or lascivious. She observed the sculptor with his thinning hair and his statues, those enormous male bodies, with this question in mind. The sculptor quite resembled Mihály. And what would this famous unfamiliar man do with her if she took off all her clothes and gave him free rein. Or would men just pull up her nightshirt to get to her. She hadn’t dared risk the question of what she would do with such a man.

How should she give in to what she feels, when she’s never seen them naked and doesn’t even want to.

Not anybody.

Except, maybe Karla.

What did Karla do when she gave in.

What comes after a kiss, what should she do, she really needs to know. For her, letting another person’s tongue and saliva into her mouth was repulsive enough. Mihály behaved like a gentleman, kissing her only dryly at first, treating her gently, with consideration — only afterward. As if initiating her gradually. This made her almost explode with jealousy when she thought about it. It gnawed at her when she thought about what he had been doing. It was truly humiliating, disgraceful.

Surely he must have learned from someone what he was teaching her.

Or perhaps he too feared what the two of them would do together eventually.

Could he have learned things from dissolute women; but then he can’t possibly teach them to her.

Yet she was young enough — or, thanks to her flawless education, lacked enough practical experience and knowledge — to believe that she could tell her thoughts and doubts to someone, that these things could be talked about.

Like telling a story.

She came to have a secret hope that there might be a person with whom she could talk about such delicate matters — or anything else. She would talk it over with Karla. Slowly this notion evaporated. First she hadn’t formulated her questions. She did not get anywhere with that. The male nudes she had seen the day before, all of them ten feet tall or more, which Breker was making for the inner courtyard of the Reich Chancellery, depressed her so much she couldn’t have asked him anything. So this, then, is what a man is or would be like, she thought to herself as she looked at the sculptor, this man who occupied himself with these men who resembled one another and whom the sculptor resembled too. Her situation was complicated by the fact that she’d spent her entire childhood around stables and greenhouses; she was well versed in questions of animal breeding and plant cultivation, and knew almost everything about the reproduction of plants and animals and about their reproductive organs. She was truly interested in genetics, and it hurt her that Schuer considered her a silly woman. She hoped for a chance at lunch to show him that she knew about Mendelism. In the studio she had moved away from the group of women so that she wouldn’t have to stare at the monumental male nudes, which, by the way, did not differ from one another in the least. The experienced women she’d been with — Margret Speer, Maria von Below, and Magda Goebbels — were all married. She felt abandoned among them, and for a while she chose to look at the statues of horses decorating the fountain, but their rearing, too smoothly sculpted muscles failed to comfort her because they too seemed to be copies.

Guided by her physical desires and repugnance, she could well imagine the act of mating. It was clear that the world of plants and animals must have a structural connection with the human world, so there could be no great difference in the essence of the reproductive practices. But she persistently overimagined what propriety demanded that she underimagine. She could not correlate her wild adolescent ideas about reproduction with her own objectivity-seeking personality and with her upbringing built on appearances and formalities, just as it would have been hard to imagine Mihály Horthy without his impeccably tailored suits and neighing with pleasure like a horse.

They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled amiably.

Each smiled to herself, the two smiles unavoidably touched, and although the smiles meant something different for each of them, they could not know that. They felt that with their smiles they were stepping into a long-desired mutual space.

The really big question is, said the unflappable Baroness Thum, what am I going to wear for that luncheon.

I too thought about what it should be, a deux-pièces or possibly trois-pièces.

I’d been counting on a nice quiet meal for the two of us — comfortable and easy.

And I have the greatest need to have a long conversation with you.

My sweet little one, I understand, I too was looking forward to it so much.

I’d like to ask your advice about so many things, answers to questions that really go beyond accepted propriety.

If I may put it that way.

Believe me, there’s no question I wouldn’t love to answer for you, provided I have an answer.

Hearing this reply, Imola’s heart began to beat harder; yes, in that case she could ask Karla, and she would too.

She did not know what.

But the tone of her voice alarmed the baroness a little. Good Lord, what does this ignorant little creature want from me.

In the absence of mutual trust, they again laughed.

Ever since our engagement, no, I don’t want to lie to you, from the mere announcement of our engagement, our life has been nothing but fulfillment of duties. As if I were being given a taste of what is waiting for me in the future when it comes to public appearances.

And on top of that, I’m also burdening you with my own heavy obligations.

These people’s problem is not that they are monsters, believe me, but I’d never have thought that so many wonderful people walk around with bad breath.

Come, come, let’s not exaggerate.

I can’t help longing for the good old days.

What good old days, you’re still a child practically.

When on a beautiful summer morning she innocently got out of bed, walked out on the terrace, down the sunny steps, and kept walking barefoot in the dewy grass.

I am truly sorry to rob you of your free hours.

Oh, don’t make it into a reproach, this is only a bit of complaining, who else may I complain to if not to you. I am full of complaints, and you may have an explanation for my constant state of irritation, but I feel I shall be happy, I can feel it, very happy and satisfied. Mihály is a wonderful man, believe me.

I do have one saving idea, if you don’t mind my mentioning it, said Baroness Thum, somewhat dampening the other woman’s enthusiasm, and at this moment they stopped by a low ivy-covered fence. You can have a migraine at any time for any reason, and you need not feel an obligation or duty about anything on my account. Erika is a simple soul, you should know she was born a Vierort and because of dear Otmar she has accustomed herself to all sorts of bad habits.

If I am a burden to you at this lunch, I’d just as soon stay away, of course.

How could you be a burden to me, on the contrary.

What kind of family are these Vierorts, tell me, asked the countess evasively — she was somewhat irritated — it seems I’ve not been well informed.

Nothing special, bourgeois, said the baroness in a tone indicating that while she understood someone might marry below his rank, to do so far from a natural act.

With her, I can make any excuse for you, no problem at all, she added.

A long moment passed during which no discernable feeling showed on Countess Auenberg’s symmetrical face. Perhaps the surprise made her indifferent, but what surprised her was not that Schuer had married below his rank, but that her friend was willing to play devious games to keep her away from this fetching man. Imola could have continued her earlier thought by saying that she kept walking in the dewy grass until she reached the tiny lake hidden among old willows where, blinded by morning light, she had caught sight of Karla in the water up to her thighs. She had arrived only the day before, in the afternoon, but her dubious reputation had preceded her by years.

The Auenberg girls were dying to see this fallen woman at last, related to the Wolkensteins on the Tyrolean branch of the family, whose illegitimate child, only a few weeks after its birth and with the mediation of the girls’ stepmother, was placed with a wet nurse in a village on their estate in Fánt. They wanted to see the innocent baby as soon as possible. At supper the evening before, however, the fallen female relative had disappointed and surprised them. She was everything but a jolly debauched female. A serious, severely beautiful, not too well dressed student, pale from the difficulties in seeing her baby again, on whom nothing could be seen of a fast life. Still, for long minutes, standing in the lake, she seemed quite unlike her well-behaved self of the previous evening; and she did not notice the young girl spying on her. With her arms held out tautly, she was slapping the surface of the water around her like a child. Yet she was stark naked under the open sky where any of the servants or the gardener could have surprised her; she was so deeply immersed in herself that she seemed unaware of her brilliant nakedness.

Which, at the castle of Fánt, was not an imaginable thing.

To strip naked.

The Auenberg girls were given baths separately; the strict morals with which they were being raised forbade them to see not only other people without their clothes but also one another and, if possible, even themselves.

They begged their stepmother in vain to take their carriage and ride over to see the unfortunate little boy.

We are receiving Karla with sisterly love, their stepmother instructed them, she may come to us anytime she wishes to visit her little boy. To judge her way of life or to forgive her sins is not our business, but we are not bound socially to her illegitimate child.

This severity pained Imola no less than did thinking about her own mother, whom she could not, despite all her efforts, cast out of her heart. Sometimes she thought of the accursed little boy so she could tell herself it was his suffering that hurt her so much and not the yawning absence of her own mother. And Karla’s severely beautiful nakedness enthralled her for a lifetime; her sun-illuminated hair pinned up high on her head, the rich, dark pubic hair on the mound of her modesty so bright in the light reflected from the lake’s surface.

To this day, it was enough to gaze at her blondness, winding and twisting in myriad strands on her magically cambered high, strong forehead to remember her mound of Venus.

Actually, what on earth do you want of me, she suddenly cried, stifling her temper so forcefully that the demand sounded more like a plea. They could both hear the quiet street filling up with her voice, and they both disapproved of it. What reached her consciousness with a slight delay and surprised her was the kind of impossibility Karla was suggesting or, rather, demanding of her.

But the shouting did not ruffle the baroness.

I do, I do understand that you can’t give up even this invitation to lunch.

What do you mean, even this invitation.

Nothing, the way I see it, you cannot give up anything, and at your age that’s as it should be. At your age I couldn’t give up anything either. Even today, I can barely give up anything. A little feeling, a little love, today I hardly ask more than that from anyone, she said with a tense, constrained smile as she took out her key.

She could have said that she nevertheless needed the emotions denied her.

They had to take a few more steps to reach the garden gate.

Their footsteps made the only sound; the street was deserted.

But I’ve admitted it. How else can I put it — I’m terribly confused. I’m confused because of you, and I’m confused about my engagement. What else may I confess to you. That’s just what I’m asking, Karla, what should I do, what should I do against my passion, said Imola, suddenly plaintive and conciliatory, her voice stimulating her emotions to the point where self-pity almost made her burst into tears.

Claiming to have a migraine, I’d only make myself ridiculous.

In their language, this meant that during this short time she had managed to fall head over heels in love with Baron von der Schuer, a ridiculous and disheartening development.

More precisely, this is how she was defending herself against Karla’s senseless attack. Karla was looking at her with genuine annoyance and a certain aversion — though her performance, in the psychological meaning of the word, was not senseless. She hadn’t really fallen head over heels in love with the man, yet she could not bear anyone keeping her from getting to know him more intimately. She wanted to see the peculiar similarity that linked him to Mihály, to the sculptor, or to all other men. At the sight of these grown men she almost fainted in little-girl astonishment. She did not understand a word of the situation. Which is why she so readily revealed her emotional vulnerability. This required great mental strength but it helped to jolt her temper to a new place. Her urge to weep was prompted by genuine, devastating fury. She was ready to hate Karla, and she did hate her for trying to keep her from doing something.

She simply had to see whether this man would be good for her.

Not that she needed anyone besides Mihály.

Whether he would fit her.

It was the same as when her domineering older sisters or enchanting stepmother discovered secret wishes of hers. Except that Mihály included all the others within him. Quickly, she had to confess her interest in another man, confess anything, so that she might stealthily reach her original goal.

Of course, my dear, one cannot do anything against oneself, the baroness said airily and opened the garden gate.

There stood before them, in the depth of the shady garden, a spacious, well-cared-for house built in the old German style, its walls covered with red and yellow climbing roses, with two large ground-floor terraces giving onto a thick green lawn. The overall impression was somewhat somber and uninviting.

Silence reigned within its walls.

In the basement, their lunch was waiting for them on the large stove in the dim kitchen; this Sunday, Baroness Thum’s housekeeper had gone on a full-day excursion with the League of German Girls, which she would not have wanted to miss for anything. Not only was she an enthusiastic and active member of the league but, as part of her secret commission, she was charged with keeping an eye on the baroness’s affairs. She had a secret key to the Chinese writing cabinet in which the baroness kept her antique godemiché. She had to report not only to Kaltenbrunner’s office but also to the office of Admiral Canaris, which monitored persons involved in militarily important scientific research.* For some time, the girl hadn’t understood what was in that serious-looking box; she kept returning to it, almost daily, to stare at it, scrutinize it, take it out and hold it in her palm. It couldn’t be that this pretty little something resembled that other thing, because she couldn’t imagine what use this mysterious something could be and for whom.

Maybe it was part of the baroness’s science.

Or a very valuable work of art, though it seemed useless.

Whenever the baroness was away for several days on some scientific mission, her housekeeper would take it down to her room in the basement and in the dark, carefully listening for any suspicious noise, very cautiously introduce the object, guiding it inside. Afterward, she would wipe it clean on the sheet and each time solemnly promise herself never to do it again.

Now the baroness herself was supposed to heat up the food, send it up in the dumbwaiter to the ground-floor dining room, where the antique table from the dining hall of a cloister had been set for two. They had planned to eat lunch and then spend the rest of the day together, just the two of them; they’d have been happy to wash dishes together, but everything turned out differently.

After about forty minutes of dead silence, they both appeared in the living room, cheerful and well put together, ready to set out again.

While they had rested in their rooms on an upper floor, darkened by closed shutters, and afterward while quickly dressing with practiced movements, they each reevaluated the internal proportions of their own emotional turmoil and that of the other woman, trying to get at the possible cause.

Barefoot and in her slip, rubbing one sole against the other, Baroness Karla took a few minutes to plunge into the proofs of her popular educational booklet. The galleys were lying on the pearl-inlaid Chinese writing cabinet. She worried that because of this little booklet that damn Schuer would not appoint her to be the head of their sister institute in Rome. He thought she shouldn’t have accepted such a professionally dubious assignment from the Education Office of the SS. And later, in Lützow Street, they indeed would reedit the text so that it lost all its scientific ambition and credibility.

The dark little inn with its blood-red little rooms where her admirer usually took her after concerts was, oddly enough, located in this same street, not far from the Education Office’s headquarters but on the other side of the street.

In fact, what bothered Baron von der Schuer was that Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein, easily at home in office intrigues, had again outwitted him, gone behind his back again, again gained an advantage; a few days earlier they had found themselves in an intense argument about it.

But the Herr Professor gave his approval in writing, forgive me for reminding you of this, but with that approval I believe we both met the office’s requirement.

Because you, Frau Professor, and not for the first time, presented me with a fait accompli.

I reported to the Herr Professor well within the required time, and I requested permission for the publication in writing.

When my secretary told you I’d be away for thirty-six hours.

I demand that the Herr Professor retract this humiliating allegation, which is completely baseless.

I suppose the strictly confidential purpose of my trip remained no secret for the Frau Professor, either.

The Herr Professor now speaks of confidential matters of which I neither had nor could have had any knowledge.

In that case, the Frau Professor would not have known where I was going with Assistant Professor Mengele and Professor Butenandt,* or how long we’d be away.

How might I have known that, Herr Professor.

That is what I’m asking you, Frau Professor.

I ask you, Herr Professor, please, do not try to evaluate the reliability of your secretary by cross-examining me, and mainly by not trusting in my cooperation, because that would be very unfair to me.

I have no reason to confirm or deny the claims of the Herr Professor’s secretary.

On the contrary, Frau Professor, my perfectly reliable secretary informed me about what the Frau Professor knew when she showed up in my office and what she did not know.

I have no reason to confirm or doubt your secretary’s claims.

It would never have occurred to me to trouble the Frau Professor with a request of such a nature.

And I can only repeat myself, but I am not keen on boring the Herr Professor.

I have always found the Frau Professor’s politeness fascinating, yet I must call your attention to the fact that order must be maintained in the institute, and not only in formal terms.

Thank you, Herr Professor, you may be certain that I shall not forget your hortatory words.

But I suggest, having seen the proofs of your booklet, and let this be friendly advice, Frau Professor, that with one quick decision, like jumping into cold water, you correct not the proofs but the larger mistake of wanting to publish the booklet.

They went fairly far with their insults, reaching great depths together, and they could not but enjoy this eternal contest; neither of them lost patience in the bout, and in this virtue they found each other.

Take a deep breath, added Baron von der Schuer very quietly and obstinately, and either withdraw the shameful booklet or take your name off it. Otherwise, we shall not be able to solve this delicate problem.

As if with these sharp words they were testing their origins and their manners.

They could not afford to go too far, they had to be on guard because they each were aware of the not quite clean methodology of the institute’s research. They could not use against each other this secret, not even as a means of extortion. Against the outer world of science, they were bound together more strongly by their silence than by their tolerance — a function of their distinguished personal backgrounds — though neither of them could be certain that the other, eager to gain advantage, might not be the first to reveal the shared secret.

They could not name their subjects or the source of their experimental data in every case, which is to say that in certain cases they had to list false sources.

As a result, they had quickly and smoothly developed an argot which they used in the publication of their data. Of course, their silent agreement about this argot characterized not only the scientific communications and research documentation of Baron von der Schuer and Baroness von Thum, not just research done on twins or on the colors of the human eye. Their method seemed to spill over from one research area to other related ones. Several of their colleagues — in the Dahlem institutes and in public-health institutions elsewhere who were willing to be falsely listed as sources — used and understood the secret scientific language.

Claus Clauberg,* doing hormone research, was probably the first to think of looking for subjects in a place where he could check and supervise them at any time, where he would not have to chase after propositi, then convince or reassure them. When he found the place, he thought it a bit awkward; he spoke of it to no one for a long time, but the results later justified his choice, even to himself. This encouraged him to share his secret with his colleagues, though he dared not tell his mother or his wife. He was the one who gave the idea to Adolf Butenandt, who wanted to transfer his extremely successful sterilization experiments with rats to a larger, human group than he had. Researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute lunched together every Wednesday in the institute’s new dining hall, and there, amid the banter, Professor Butenandt complained to his colleagues about how complicated and humiliating it was to conduct experiments on the mentally ill.

Schuer listened quietly, rather shocked by both the complaints and Clauberg’s temperate response to them.

But Butenandt went on asking Clauberg questions with animated interest, curious about the smallest details; he wanted to be free of the mentally ill patients, who were neither funny nor innocent.

Then a moment came when their give-and-take faltered in mutual embarrassment.

Coffee was served in the large salon, where each of the three men rather abruptly — and separately — sought out the company of others.

One cannot say that their serious doubts concerned only the scientific purity of their published data.

But since they were constantly pressed for time in their research programs they were in no position to dismiss the idea: why couldn’t they consider these unfortunates as propositi, since they had to be isolated anyway because of their antisocial behavior. That was one side that had to be considered. The other side was that race-protection laws and measures promoting ethnic cleansing had loud and very positive echoes in the scientific world, even though the scientific hypotheses on which these laws and measures were based statistically had not been adequately verified. American, Scandinavian, and French researchers also had their own genetic-pathological hypotheses, and they earnestly hoped their governments would follow Germany’s brilliant example, so that they could raise their research from the level of scientific pastime to that of a national cause.

Clauberg and Butenandt had reason to fear international competition, but since they were not overly ambitious, they wished only to speed up their research a little when they agreed to this dubious solution. Perhaps they did not fully appreciate that many things run on parallel tracks in the scientific world and therefore the effect of moral scruples on the result might on occasion prove fatal.

So when Karla von Thum zu Wolkenstein unexpectedly showed her boss samples she had received from a hitherto unknown anatomical and dissecting center in the Weimar area, and without having asked for them, her face literally beamed. Of course Baron von der Schuer did not believe that it was a surprise — come, come, several dozen pairs of eyes without asking for them, come now, there are no coincidences like that — but it was clear to him that the baroness, in possession of such a rich supply and promises of even richer supplies in the future, would soon establish a new system for defining genetically the color of human eyes, a subject on which he had been working for more than five years, struggling with a constant dearth of human material. He decided immediately that he too would put an end to the era of dilettante improvisations.

He wouldn’t be bashful anymore either.

He’d take the matter in hand, organize it properly, and above all would accept the support that, with the intercession of his assistant at the university, Himmler had already offered him.

Because of his foolish scientific attitude, he hadn’t accepted it the moment it had been offered.

What idiocy.

The richness of the pool from which he could now draw dazzled him, and for a long time it compensated for the missed opportunities of the past.

At least it considerably calmed his doubts.

Yet those doubts gained strength for a short while when the pastor of St. Anne’s Church in Dahlem, after several warnings by the authorities, was taken into custody and, if one could trust hearsay, sent to the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. Pastor Niemöller had been his spiritual guide, one might say his paternal friend.*

To be honest, many people, including some from the highest circles, had warned him to be more careful with his sermons.

Schuer was sorry that he himself had never warned him, though he had always known he should have.

And lately, thanks to her achievements, Baroness Thum was making herself independent, so much so that with the support of her highly placed patrons she was appointed full professor and he had to free her from some of her former duties at the institute.

And this, no matter how noncompetitive he was, Schuer could not forgive.

Even though lately the baroness had been behaving quite humbly, or at least she meant to, knowing that the means she had deployed against Schuer had not been above board. She told herself to be more moderate. She relied on the strength of their lifelong scientific complicity when she refused to withdraw the publication of the pamphlet, and she never considered taking her name off it; the booklet was supposed to be published within a few weeks with a print run of 600,000 copies, which would bring her considerable income.

She felt no small satisfaction; her pettiness reveled within her.

Schuer was considered not only a much more eminent scientist than she but also an exceptionally talented stylist; still, not one of his lines would ever reach as many readers as any one of the sentences in her little booklet. Nonetheless she tried reading the text once more with his eyes, while with Imola’s head she thought about herself.

They were both deeply disturbed by each other’s presence.

She even felt sorry a little for Schuer because she had been so cruel to him.

That was why she looked at the text again.

In their respective rooms, at a good distance from each other, they both felt a little ashamed for having let their emotions become visible; they did not want to see each other again.

She did not open the writing cabinet to take the pretty little godemiché out of its silk-lined box for even just a few seconds. Occasionally, infrequently, as a self-consolation, as one who kept this dark story a secret from herself, she would smell it quickly, all over, and then thrust it into her mouth. But she was helpless, precisely because of her highly placed patrons in the Education Office on Lützow Street, whom she needed in her quiet war against Schuer, just as they needed her scientific prestige and well-established name. Those patrons now supported her professorial appointment on moral grounds, while Schuer had long opposed it on moral as well as pedagogical grounds. In this too Schuer suffered a defeat. Never again could he exploit her as a fallen woman or unmarried mother, though without her patrons she’d have been vulnerable to his machinations. Thanks to his assistant’s connections in Frankfurt, Schuer had access to Himmler, who had received him several times, but this connection had not made the state apparatus’s enormous power available to him, nor had it allowed him to ignore it.

When a little later they stood together in the sunny living room, ready to go, they were aware that for the next few hours they would have to restrain their sentiments and emotions. And now that did not seem so difficult. They admired each other’s dress with an intimate joy that made it seem as if there had been no tension between them earlier.

Come, turn around, let me see.

My, this is really something.

Even though in fact they each had reservations about the other’s clothes.

The lines of this suit of yours are completely charming.

Every one of your shoes and handbags is, if I may say so, a real masterpiece.

They were going to have to walk for about ten minutes in their medium-heel shoes.

Given the cool edge of the breeze, they didn’t worry about working up a sweat, so they minded their steps and did not hurry. And exchanged their words circumspectly too.

When they left behind them the last houses on the reserved, elegant Hüttenweg, they were greeted by the mellow summer smell that spreads all across the Mark-Brandenburg Plain with its open sky, wide meadows, low and dense forests, and shallow waters overgrown with cane and sedge.

Countess Imola found, speaking frankly, that Baroness Karla’s toilette was ridiculous, though she had nothing serious against the outfit per se. But she wouldn’t have worn that kind of shoe or carried that sort of handbag, though she appreciated the workmanship and the exceptional quality of the leather. Karla’s high-buttoned dress was of white synthetic silk striped horizontally in light blue, with a round collar; over the dress and made of the same material was a cape, striped vertically with lighter and darker blue, that fastened over the chest with a longish narrow tongue fitted with only five buttons. A sophisticated optical illusion and the buttoning arrangement well emphasized Karla’s breasts, which she had first seen when she was a little girl and would have given a great deal to see again and touch with her fingers. The illusion came from letting the cape fall so that it not only concealed Karla’s too-wide hips but elongated her waist.

The Auenberg girls must have been very proud of their waistlines, which they had inherited from their mother, and they did everything to make their clothes follow this advantageous physical trait. As if in great secrecy, and despite everything, they were building their fragile fate on their dangerous maternal inheritance.

Imola appreciated the fact that this clever little trick with the buttons gave Baroness Karla a fashionable silhouette; a tailor’s clever work, she had to admit; nevertheless, she looked like a dried-out country schoolmarm in it. Only her handbag and the almost mundane shoes testified to her social standing; well, all right, so did her wonderfully fine silk stockings. The shoes and handbag were made of the relatively smooth, not so knobby skin hanging like dewlaps from the lower jaws of alligators; this is the animal’s most vulnerable spot if it takes up a fighting stance when attacked by its mates.

Germans have no sense of how to make an appearance, of how to shine, no doubt about it, she thought, with no small satisfaction.

As for Baroness Karla’s own silent opinion, it was that while her eyes could not get enough of the rich sight of Countess Imola’s toilette, she thought her Hungarian friend was once again somewhat overdressed — not by much, but still.

Hungarians seem to lack moderation or a sense of austerity, she said to herself contentedly, which in us northerners comes strongly and naturally, and so she doesn’t notice how embarrassingly conspicuous she is here, in an essentially rural environment.

Like a bird of paradise, like a peacock.

She was cross with Imola for her tendency to exaggerate, but also proud and enthusiastic, almost like an adolescent girl, because Imola showed with her behavior that she was allowing herself the kind of rebellion that Karla had never permitted herself, notwithstanding her unrestrained inner life and secret adventures. Following the examples of women moving in the highest social circles, Imola wore classically designed clothes and carried accessories made of the finest materials. Severe, comfortable, medium-brown goatskin shoes with fairly stable heels on her narrow feet, a somber, rather dull handbag of the same goatskin along with the finest kid gloves, filigreed at the wrist. These items established the basis of her appearance, giving it weight and seriousness. In truth she was beyond the point of being either under- or overdressed, and Baroness Thum, who lived far from the high life, was mistaken on this score. Imola used airy, light, pale pastel colors to make as graceful and playful an impression as possible, and at the same time she deflected attention from her physical attributes, her bodily irregularities, not with conventional sartorial ideas but with extravagant ones.

To represent one’s family and social class continuously, a person should not display anything that makes her appearance exceptional or peculiar.

Her way of dressing found meaning in the absence of characterization, as it were, and in persistent individuality.

It was all right that she lived at a different level, thought the baroness, rather crossly, but sometimes she ought to tone down her style a bit. But here again the baroness was mistaken. As a lover would be who in the throes of passion demands that the beloved be ever more flawless at every moment, more perfect than perfect.

What intemperance.

Countess Imola, in contrast to Baroness Karla, could not do without at least one expensive piece of jewelry; in summer she saw to it that there would never be more than one.

With magical lightness and no less extravagance, she had pinned on the severely cut English lapel of her peach silk suit a brooch decorated with a real pearl. The pearl was exceptionally large, of a color somewhere between white and gray and including — in certain lights even reflecting — all the hues of the rainbow; it was set on a severe-looking platinum rosette. It came from Le Maître’s Paris workshop. She had a matching platinum ring, also decorated with a similarly expensive pearl, which the gloves concealed, but anyway she did not consider the ring as jewelry.

The baroness could not work at her table in the dissecting room or in the laboratory with all sorts of jewelry on. But she used this argument only as an excuse. In reality, it was physical stinginess that kept her from wearing jewelry.

The Boîte Rouge was the only place where she readily revealed and displayed her splendid anonymity to strangers.

Nothing else, ever.

She was extremely ungenerous with herself.

When she spoke in German, Countess Auenberg thought in German, yet things that might be considered improper occurred to her in Hungarian.

I’d rather marry my dear Mihály quickly, she now thought to herself as she sized up Karla and excused herself. Whatever happens. In the depth of her soul, she feared she might dry up as this other woman had. If she does not act soon. Even if I go crazy because he so resembles those other men. And she laughed in her anticipated great happiness because, regardless of how much she feared Mihály’s brutality and however much she doubted herself, the promise of their future stormy physical encounters proved stronger in her.

An eager and unsuspecting Karla took over part of this feeling along with the laughter or, rather, she received a portion of it, not undeservedly, and laughed along with Imola.

Even though Imola was by this time laughing at the thought that she’d never let herself become such a scientific nun.

Ever since she had seen Karla in the lake, she has been following her involuntarily; because of her, she studied biology as a private student at the university in Prague. Now she will stop following her. She will be happy and she will bloom. She too had attended Professor Nussbaum’s anatomy lectures and his lab sessions about dissection, which were hard to take but necessary since she did not want to know less than Karla did. It’s been sheer madness what I’ve been ready to do because of her. Still, she could not decide to enroll as a regular student, take exams, and go from degree to degree as other students did. Before Prague, she had never attended public schools. She would have felt it profoundly improper to have to account for her knowledge to men, to complete strangers, or to have them put questions to her. What’s all this unbridled laughter, the baroness asked, while laughing herself, trying to navigate to a plane somewhere between goodwill and suspicion, as if she knew that in linking up with the younger woman’s thoughts she was in fact laughing at herself, finding her own fate unworthy and frivolous.

So many foolish things pop into one’s mind, it’s nothing, really, not worth talking about. I don’t want to bother you with it.

I see.

Goodness, I did not mean to offend you.

But this time you really did, said the baroness, both pleasure and pain sounding in her voice, for she had sensed that Imola’s laughter had been at her expense, and now she had to exploit this alibi to the full by acting offended.

But she could not have known that the younger woman was in the process of parting with her for good.

And at that moment they laughed again on each other’s account, skittishly and happily, like two immature schoolgirls.

They put their arms around each other’s waist as they walked. Their hip bones bumped a number of times before their steps found a harmonious rhythm. They took care with their arms not to rumple their clothes. Soon they reached Ihne Street and proceeded in the shade of not yet too tall or too ramified plane trees.

There was no time left for the baroness to show the countess the world-famous scientific compound’s professional or special buildings, the great lecture hall, the large dining hall, and the halls designed for social gatherings, but they passed by Harnack House, with its guest apartments maintained in a charming rustic style. Here, as if in passing, Baroness Karla remarked that Margarethe von Bellardi managed the institute with great expertise and elegance; she had been her classmate at Prague and for years has been her most trusted confidante even though at the university they hadn’t even noticed each other.

Should there be a chance for it, she would introduce her to Imola.

She said most trusted confidante in order to hurt Imola.

They reached the building, with its dignified and modest exterior; its narrow wings were articulated by tall windows.

To make things simple we’ll now simply march through the institute, though that means I won’t be able to show you my rooms or the laboratories.

We don’t want to be late.

You’re right, not for any reason.

Along with their words their movements became light and airy, almost breezy, as they hurried noisily through the revolving doors.

The doorman’s booth was wide open.

They met no one in the well-lit vestibule.

The back section of the building, more spacious than promised by the facade, seemed with its big windows to spill into the garden. Their laughter, their hasty words, and their strong steps echoed loudly in the empty corridors. Baroness Thum moved with ease; with the vivacity of her movements she was also trying to demonstrate how much she felt at home. In the capacious stairwell, permeated with the smell of formaldehyde, she stopped for a moment to indicate with a gloved hand that they’d be leaving the building through the rear exit, that her office was upstairs and her great collection downstairs.

About this great genetic collection, kept in wax-sealed glass vessels of sometimes enormous dimensions, inside strictly locked closets, she had meant to talk in great detail to the countess, even the evening before, when she’d just arrived in Berlin. So that when, on a calm afternoon of a day in the future, she moved the sliding doors and showed her the contents of the closets, the countess would be prepared. Part of the collection consisted of material for her special research: dissected eyeballs and preserved eyeball segments, always one eyeball and then various segments of its mate. Most of the items in the collection showed hereditary organic anomalies and abnormalities, classified according to different human races, and every display model was human-size. But she did not have a chance to make a detailed report because of Imola’s indifference and lack of interest, for which she was unprepared. Nothing interests her but her fiancé. And it just so happened that only days before Imola’s arrival, Karla had successfully completed a project containing seminal scientific discoveries that would put a significant tool in the hands of physicians involved in defining racial affinity. Karla was not interested in anything outside her own work, and she couldn’t share her incredible joy with the silly goose.

I have been probing the secrets of Creation, and she prattles about her trousseau.

In reaction to the insulting lack of interest, she quickly decided not to show Imola the collection, which colleagues from all over the globe came to admire.

Demonstrating abnormalities and anomalies was no easy task; organs, limbs, and other body parts, occasionally entire human heads or trunks and lower bodies, had to be dissected and displayed according to size in the different glass vessels, and in such a way that physicians arriving for extension courses in genetics would focus their attention not on the mutilations but on the subject of the scientific demonstration.

Now they were already out in the institute’s garden, richly planted with flowers; it was separated by a single, severely clipped hedgerow from the splendid rose garden attached to the director’s villa, where the roses were in their second bloom of the season.

Countess Auenberg thought it quite embarrassing to be using a rear entrance, no doubt to surprise the family with their arrival.

Indeed, an unsuspecting and relaxed Schuer was leaning against the railing of the upstairs terrace with an open book in his hand; he was explaining something to his whimpering son. And the lady of the house, with her garden gloves and clippers, was still gathering flowers for the festive table.

The institute’s doorman followed her with a pretty little basket, telling her something she seemed very interested in.

The two guests had arrived a few minutes sooner than expected.

And after they got everything nicely sorted out and were in the salon Baroness Erika introduced to the countess the twelve-year-old Siegfried, the ten-year-old Sieglinde, and the six-year-old Ortrud, they all hurried into the dining room to sort and then tastefully arrange the flowers in small vases and bowls; since the countess took a very active part in this, Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein found an opportunity to take her boss aside and tell him about the person of her young lady friend. He had to know that he would be chatting not with any old Hungarian countess, there should be no misunderstanding or mistake of any kind in this matter. She was a guest of the state, received at the highest echelons, and within a few months she would be a queen.

Without further ado they sat down at the table.

No More Time

She was walking ahead of me and I followed her. As if she didn’t hear it. I felt disgust and hatred. And envy and admiration that she could do something like that. And I was the miserable wretch she could do it to.

For some reason, they closed the store a little early that day. Luckily I’d gone down before that to stand in front of the building. My heart was racing; I thought it would burst. I was preoccupied with all the time I had to wait. I couldn’t understand why I was so restless, so weak and childish because of a woman. Who doesn’t interest me very much. I was angry with myself. I felt as if I were doing something important the wrong way. Or doing something I shouldn’t be doing. First I followed her from across the boulevard, and when her boss disappeared in the lobby next door to give the steel box to the concierge, I went over to her side. She was just turning into Szófia Street when the bell of the Terézváros church began to peal. Like a secret signal that I did not understand. Maybe I couldn’t relax because of the blustery evening wind. She kept walking and I followed her. It didn’t seem likely that I could call after her, and even if I managed to calm down, where could we have gone in such weather. I did not understand what I was doing, but I could not avoid doing it. It was not completely dark yet, the sky was aflame, and gigantic clouds were swimming in it. It was no longer raining, but with each new squall I felt light spray on my face. The streetlamps’ yellow lights were swaying. The city, with all its wet flags, was deserted.

In this dark little street, she had to hear my footsteps. She was tapping in my brain with her fine little high heels, or maybe in my soul. I did not want to catch up with her, because I really didn’t have anything to say to her. I couldn’t figure out what I should say to her. Still, I was counting on her stopping suddenly, was hoping for it, yet could not imagine what we would do if she did. Since she’d started out and I’d followed her, she gave no sign of noticing me at all. It would be hard for me to say how I felt. Maybe I wasn’t feeling anything. Because I was more interested in what she was feeling, or what she was thinking about, or why was she doing it in this particular way. That’s what I wanted somehow to intuit from her, from her carriage, from her steps, from anything. And to know whether she heard my steps and was only pretending she didn’t. Because if it meant nothing to her that I was following her, then she must have forgotten me, she wasn’t running away from me, she wasn’t leading me anywhere but, having finished work, was simply hurrying someplace. And that would be the end of our story, I’d have to accept that. But at least I’d see whom she was going to meet. Because I knew she was going to meet somebody, I just did.

It was as though I simultaneously had two unrealizable hopes, equally strong. If she was going to meet someone, I could simply avoid her; just keep walking. But if she didn’t meet anyone, there’d be no more excuses; I knew that too. If we could not talk to each other, open our mouths and understand each other, then our relationship would remain a painful illusion, a disgrace, a defeat. And I wished for nothing more than such a defeat, accepting in advance that I would be the loser. Or rather, I’m not sure I could imagine such a great defeat. But if I had to open my mouth, I might have nothing to say to her. This was just too much; I can’t talk about it. And I wished nothing more than that I should have nothing to say to her. Then at least it would be over. In the meantime, it was most important that I could see her, follow her, adjust my pace to the patter of her high heels. I had never before seen her walking on the street from so close up, and this became more important than anything. Whatever happens later, this I will find out now. Or maybe I already have. Even though I couldn’t know in advance what I wanted to find out. But I knew I was curious about this monotonous sight that changed every second, though I had no idea why. I drank up the vision, blotted it up, and was not disappointed by a single moment of it.

Maybe her coat caused a slight disappointment. If not disappointment, a little confusion. She wasn’t wearing her own coat; it had to have been somebody else’s; I could see that it wasn’t hers. No stores sold such coats, it was too big, sand-colored, made of some light material and maybe a man’s coat. And this sand-colored blotch was leading me down dark Szófia Street. The coat not only bothered me, this ill-fitting coat that made it so I couldn’t see her, see who she was, but bothered the tenderness I felt for her. It was not her body I wanted to see, or maybe it was. The silence of her naked body, unhindered. When I’d seen her from a distance or in her white work coat, nothing disturbed my sense of her beauty. And nothing restrained my fancy either. As if only in the finest garments could I appropriately dress her beauty. But her coat reminded me of socialist reality, of the disagreeable and recurring thought that I was pursuing just an ordinary woman who worked in an espresso bar, and then this couldn’t be more than an awkward little adventure anyway. Which I didn’t need. And if I was already thinking this, it was almost as if I had already offended her. As if a wicked aunt were calling to me from the pages of a pulp novel: you can’t belong to each other anyway. I’ve always made allowances for women, but it was high time to admit to myself that I was more passionately interested in men, since what I’m really interested in is what I am like. Seeing her in her white work coat, there might have been room for a romantic imagination yearning for elegant richness, but seeing her in her awkward penury made that impossible. As though nothing was or could ever again be in its right place. Women were not the ones. I couldn’t find my own way, or anyone else’s, or anything at all. Perhaps this inability of mine lent weight and strength to her beauty, but I didn’t want to retreat from my illusions. Luckily for me, she did not stop and gave no sign that she heard my steps. She hurried on as if she had urgent business somewhere.

Her wonderful footsteps gave me a respite.

She was probably wearing a tight-fitting skirt under the ugly coat, for her steps were very short though very determined, the patter of her high heels almost aggressive. I wouldn’t have thought she had nice legs. I was seeing something of which I had to say that I’d never seen anything so beautiful, but I’m sure I did not elaborate on the sight, not with words. I knew that men paid special attention to legs. But this too was one of those things I didn’t understand about men. It was as if there was a direct relationship between their sexual potency and the sort of legs this or that woman had. While men talked about women’s legs, I looked incomprehensibly at the men or at their legs. I was engrossed in her straight posture, in the unbroken rhythm of her steps, in everything that was entrusted to her feet, rising in a pleasing arc to her ankles and to strong and shapely calves in silk stockings. Earlier, I hadn’t even thought that I would or ever could need a woman, because the crudely declared need for possession rather nauseated or scared me. I considered it absurd, ominous, arrogant, and crassly stupid when a man declared something like this out loud, or made eyes or gestures to make his intentions clear to the woman in question. In myself, I couldn’t arouse anything that even remotely resembled an urge like that. Earlier, the very assumption of something like this would have made me sink into the floor with shame just to think of it, let alone do such things. That I’d be interested in someone’s legs or might want someone because of her legs, ass, or breasts. And I especially did not understand about the ass; why the ass, what could men do with women’s asses.

So now that’s what I was thinking about. As if somebody inside me had said it straight out, loud and clear. Well, this woman certainly has great legs. I want this woman. And there was nothing to add, not that I wanted to, because the statement referred not to her soul but to how she walked, to everything that this impossible coat so cruelly concealed, to her ass. I wanted to look at her ass, to see her ass and her breasts and her belly.

It was all about my own soul, and I could not resist it.

Her steps kept pattering on. I heard these wishes uttered within me in my own voice, and not only was I not ashamed of them but an unknown quantity of unreasonable cheerfulness was bursting in my chest. Which made me exactly as irresponsible and haughty as I saw other men being in similar situations. Only a little while earlier, I had been eagerly sneaking after her; only a little while ago I had felt the heavy, anxious, nervous, and unstoppable hammering of my heart, and now this — this puffed-up, conceited, and unimpeded gaiety. I kept following her and my own voice made me feel free.

This is how we reached Ferenc Liszt Square.

She is leading, this woman is leading me, I thought, she was leading me somewhere. That was my definite impression. To tell the truth, though, I couldn’t really have believed this, because I had no intention of arriving anywhere, could not have said where I might arrive with her and what was making me so puffed up, but by then at least the doubt and dread had disappeared. As if I were saying, if it won’t be like this, well, then it will be some other way, shrugging my shoulders. Even if I’d known what was waiting for me, what kind of months or years, I still would have surrendered to this moment, because I had nothing to ward it off with. I haven’t regretted anything, I’d do the same today, I would surrender.

While we were crossing the square in front of the Academy of Music, she had to lean forward and force herself into the squalls.

She was holding on to her bag slung over her shoulder. She turned her head to the side to keep the wind from slamming ice-cold drizzle into her face.

I let the wind do what it wanted to, let it hit me in the face, let the water drip down my neck, so long as I could see her, not lose sight of her, not for a second. And then I turned my head away too, and for a while I followed her like that, though I was as good as blind and with drizzle spitting into my face. Inside the academy, a concert must have started; in the pale light of the lobby, behind the art nouveau swing doors, strolled two usherettes deep in conversation. I don’t know if she slowed down or I speeded up, but by the time we reached the corner of Király Street there were no more than ten paces between us. I did not dare go closer; I deliberately kept this distance.

Let her lead; let me follow.

Perhaps it was only for a few seconds, but I was gripped by an attractive irresponsibility, or perhaps I was completely filled with joy, or one feeling totally masked the other. Above Király Street the sky was completely dark, with only the streetlights swaying in the wind. A police car was approaching, its wheels whispering a soft slow melody on the wet asphalt. As if with its quiet purring it had banished all the other noises in the empty street, the unexpected clapping of the wind, the mysterious knocks, the low gurgling in the gutters on the unadorned neoclassical corner building. Even if it hadn’t been a car like that in which they took my father away and made him disappear, I’d still be afraid of them forever. My own fate no longer interested me, and my father’s fate had shrunk to being a mere episode in the overall story. She was moving along, walking close to the corner building while navigating between puddles and water dripping from holes in the gutters. The squalls could not easily penetrate this area, yet the roofs were clamoring. The police paid no attention to us, in their eyes we were only pedestrians; still, they watched and acknowledged us. Quarreling lovers. The car carried four somber outward-looking faces, busy ascertaining whether there was still an adequate level of fear in the dead city. I could have been a rapist-murderer; all they were interested in was the degree of fear. I could have been a mugger planning to rob the woman and waiting for the police to disappear. It was happening right before their eyes, yet they had no words or even eyes for it. No matter how much they checked things, the street was still there and they could not keep people from walking on it. It was the minimum they could permit, but it showed on their faces that this was too much for them, more than necessary; it overtaxed them.

There went the prey, who deliberately revealed her steps to me. And the city’s darkness was also not working for the police. I wouldn’t have minded walking all night in its labyrinths. If they had followed us, they’d have had nothing to uncover. It was like a blood clot momentarily stuck in the heart for an unexpected, fleeting instant; still, I felt light and it made me happy that I could follow a woman on the street right in front of the police. I could have easily said that I was enjoying my secret little liberty. As if it were the randomly appearing and disappearing police car that made me understand what I had taken earlier as regret and sadness on her face. I saw my own hesitancy, anxiety, and dread squirting up from under the police car’s wheels. My entire life until then had been nothing but withdrawal and hiding; I wouldn’t have thought there was free will — as indeed there was not. But now, with her steps, she simply suspended my fear. I didn’t care about her ugly coat either, because my hated cousin’s hand-me-downs no longer bothered me. Only a few more steps were left, which is to say no more than a few more seconds. And that was the end of this last little reverie, because then she turned into Nagymező Street and disappeared. As if she had been meaning to trick me. And life would indeed be nothing but bitterness and disappointment. I speeded up and took the last steps to the corner on a run. I could not let her do this to me after she had brought me so far. I wanted to see at least where she was going.

She was standing in front of the church as if she had meant to flee there in the first place. One wing of the heavy door was wide open.

She could see that I was virtually running after her. And I, at last, could see that she was waiting for me, nobody else, because in the middle of the broad sidewalk she turned around to face me. I couldn’t slow down, and I couldn’t have said how far I’d go in my daring now that she had gone this far. As a feeling, it was as if, unable to brake my momentum, I’d plow into her — but my courage abandoned me at just that point. I had a chance to live through one of my life’s most lucid and delicate moments. There was no room for deception or falsehood in it. It was a brief flash preceded and followed by thick fog. She stood there, stiff within her own obstinate decision. She would wait for and, with a single blow, bring the insane attacker low; that’s how I saw her, determined, wild, and aggressive. But the closer I came, the more nicely she smiled, as if welcoming the attack with the joy of brutality come true. Which meant that she was no less insane than I. Her smile was so refined, so soft, so unalterable, yet expanding and spreading so that her face almost swam away with it, but the obstinate decision with which she planted herself on the glistening sidewalk was not nice.

It was crude and uncouth, and my overhasty running wasn’t nice either, as if my limbs were flying away from me, leaving me unable to control or aim my movements in the right direction. The eagerness, this greedy fear that I might lose or miss out on something, was not aesthetically pleasing. And neither was my alarm that I might smash what I wanted to seize and hold on to. But it was nice that I wasn’t ashamed of all this, of my desire to possess. In what way would it be possible to possess an entire human being — in no way. There was nothing I could ruin. For at least a single moment to grab her ass with both hands. And that’s what she responded to with her smile because she wasn’t ashamed either. She said, I’m not playing hide and seek with you. She said, what do you want. She said, here I am. She did not say, possess me, but now I shall crush you, tear you apart, devour you, possess you. And that, after all, was a different kind of beauty, though a little funnier too, or cruder. Until then, she had always seemed rather fragile, transparent, anemic, and sad. I could not yet see clearly that she had physical characteristics in which the cruelty of her soul was engraved. In her there was room also for the ugly; on her the lovely also had its place; madness took up space in her, as did shameful cunning. Ultimately we both knew what we wanted from each other, and we even knew that we were unstoppable.

Yet I had been counting on something entirely different.

She had to be beautiful; that’s what I had counted on. Nothing should be left that wasn’t nice, harmonious, or aesthetically arranged. Although nothing had a real explanation, things did not happen that way. And then there was no explanation for the way things did happen either.

Drizzle shone on her hair and shoulders. The entire street glistened around us.

Here, at the corner of Nagymező and Király streets, the wind swept up everything, blew and scattered things everywhere; the streetlamp’s light was swinging on its cable above the pavement, the wet branches trembled nervously.

I asked her if she’d known I was following her.

She said she knew and shrugged her shoulders, as if she didn’t consider this interesting or significant enough to talk about.

Drizzle sat on her eyelashes too, and much more interesting than the meaning of the words was that we were speaking to each other. That some kinds of words were coming out of her mouth and I had answers for them — this was something completely new and completely incredible. And we were speaking loudly too; we had to, over the noise of the wind. But it wasn’t nice that I wound up so close to her. As if I were forcefully invading her, giving her no way out; at the next moment she’d have to back away from this exaggerated closeness. It was not appropriate to the situation. As if, after all, she might have wanted something other than I did.

I said that even though she’d known I was following her, she pretended not to notice me.

Because she had to hurry. Her whole boring life is nothing but one big hurry, oh God how boring. Even now, she has to go on running.

But how did she know it was me and not someone else, seeing as how she didn’t look back.

She knew I’d understand without an explanation, she answered, and from her smile I understood that this insane woman really knew everything in advance. I shouldn’t be angry with her, but she could not go into explanations. We wouldn’t have time for a regular conversation this time, anyway.

But I still don’t understand, I said. I really couldn’t decide whether to show up or not because she hadn’t really answered my question that morning.

She shrugged her shoulders again.

But I could see her ring, she said, I am a married woman, she said. She had seen clearly that several times I had looked at her ring. In her opinion, it was very obvious that she was marked as belonging to someone else, and she wasn’t kidding.

I had looked at her ring because I didn’t understand the situation.

I had to decide about everything else.

And I thought I was only imagining things, I moaned. I made myself imagine, fantasize things. What I was looking at was the question whether she was engaged or, I don’t know what I’d thought, maybe recently married, or whether she was wearing the ring on her right hand or on her left.

She can’t arrange a date like this in front of her boss, could she. They’re on deadly bad terms, she said emphatically. Which is bad enough as it is, no point making it worse with some stupidity.

One can see that, I said.

See from what, she asked suspiciously.

From the way you two go around avoiding and watching each other all the time and relax a little only when the other woman’s husband or fat little son comes into the store. Then they manage to be more polite, considerate.

Although our eyes were flitting around each other’s eyes, I was watching her mouth. And how she too didn’t know what to do with her hands. I didn’t know what to do with mine, and because of that I was standing so stiffly in front of her that my legs trembled.

The trembling did not let up; it kept on, gentle but steady.

She speaks nicely to everyone. She never wants to hurt anyone.

Nor I, I replied, in which there was a good dose of coquetry.

Not you either.

With these three words in the daring informal mode, everything changed again. Until then we had been politely using the formal address, now she changed the rules and we had to look at each other in a new light. As if we were looking at the three words receding, which calmed and slowed us down. It was impossible to decide whether she’d said this deliberately or the way she thought about me had just slipped out of her mouth. But I think she said it deliberately. She wanted to test me. And it was like pulling aside another curtain so we could see each other better.

Still, I asked her about her boss, what problems did she have with her, because I thought it was better to talk about someone else instead of ourselves. And I used the informal address also, straight off. What’s your problem with the boss. Only I didn’t know what to do about the trembling of my legs. I was afraid my knees would knock against her and then I couldn’t hide the insane, humiliating shaking. What would she do with a shaky-kneed idiot like me. It was as if suddenly, with this trembling, my entire terrible former life had caught up with me and flooded me. She shrugged her shoulders again, and to see this third shrug wasn’t nice anymore. I don’t know how else to put it, but it seemed to indicate a pettiness in her character; it wasn’t that I had embarrassed her, she was embarrassed for herself. She turned her head away a little as if she preferred to look into the distance, and that once again evoked for me her unfathomable sorrow. Or maybe she turned away so our faces would not be so close. And again I felt she didn’t do this because of me, not because of my breath, but because of her. She was gauging her closeness to me; it wasn’t my closeness to her that bothered her. Or she wasn’t trying to avoid my closeness, anyway, but wanted to give herself time; she wanted to gain time to decide what to do or what she might do. And in the meantime she didn’t do what she might have done of course, and I didn’t do it either.

We did not fall on each other or bite each other, as animals in heat would have done. My knees went on shaking uncontrollably.

By the way, you’re wrong about me and my boss, she said, staring into the street, spotted with lights; actually, they got along pretty well. Only she didn’t want to spend her whole life in such a miserable shop. She hates candy and sweets anyway. She wanted to take evening courses at the university, since she can’t study during the day. But she hadn’t gotten a recommendation from her workplace, thanks to her boss, so she can’t go to night school.

I can’t study anywhere.

She must have been thinking of something else as she spoke, or else didn’t really want to talk about this. And then, pretty absentmindedly, she asked what I was studying and she glanced at me. Her expression remained serious; perhaps she envied me for being able to study. Maybe she was truly interested. Just as it really interested me why she couldn’t. I didn’t dare move my feet or do something, anything, to stop the shaking, in case the movement might disturb her closeness to me. And then she might retreat. As if there were a territory I’d already conquered and now mustn’t give up any part of. But I couldn’t understand how the words were coming out of me or what I was doing, because suddenly I lied and said I was going to the School of Physical Education. I don’t know why I said that. And as if I had just then decided that, despite my own well-understood interest, I could not expose myself to her. Maybe because she was a married woman and took it all seriously. As if to say, this can’t last more than two days, maybe today and tomorrow, or maybe only this hour, but definitely a short period, which she could end anytime, or I could; nothing more than a passing fancy. Because it wasn’t easy to extricate oneself from a lie like that. I probably wanted with my lie to keep control of a situation I no longer controlled. I could not escape my situation, yet I managed to let the dread make itself heard in it. And when she glanced at me, she no longer made her eyes flitter around mine but looked at my forehead only, or my hair. And maybe that’s why she believed my lie. It was a little disappointing and surprising, that she was someone I could deceive. She was grasping the strap of her shoulder bag with both hands. As if only something very little separated her from stroking my stubbly face. I don’t know. It was as though I didn’t want what I wanted. And as if I’d said what I’d said, resorting to an impossible lie like that, only because my hair was cut short, like a crew cut. Or I simply didn’t know why I did it.

But that sentence again changed everything, turned things into a different direction, and it was irrevocable.

One always feels clearly these turning points in one’s life, and nothing can be done about them.

I quickly asked her what she wanted to study, just so she wouldn’t ask me more questions. But this was very strange, because the lie that had simply appeared in my mouth, independent of my will, now seemed to be erasing my embarrassment. As if I needed some ignoble advantage to collect strength for an attack of uncertain outcome, and the lie indeed gave me strength, and my legs were no longer shaking.

Philosophy.

I looked at her; this was not to be believed.

Philosophy, I asked incredulously. What, I asked, as if I hadn’t heard well.

As if I were hearing echoes of my own lie.

And I didn’t even know what philosophy was. What had philosophy to do with a beauty like this woman. Philosophy was something my uncle talked about with his colleagues. I had the distinct impression that this branch of science was a means by which old professors could use one another in some dark business or trap one another. They fuss around in this language to disguise their true intentions and so as not to frighten others away before it’s time. It had never occurred to me that philosophy could be anything but the thieves’ Latin of these old fogies. When they invoked philosophy too frequently, Nínó would get up without a word and leave the men to themselves, or she’d chat with the ladies.

But the woman didn’t even acknowledge my insulting shock, except now her anger opened up, her helplessness, and she pelted me with her bitterness.

If her life is being ruined, it’s thanks to that miserable Jewess.

She hit me with that word, which she may not have noticed, or perhaps she meant to hit me with it.

But she’d outsmart them. If she had wanted to enroll in the Academy of Commerce they’d have unconditionally supported her application. She should have taken them up on that offer. Dumb as she was, she refused it. And what was she jumping around for, she didn’t have a very good social background for the current regime. Downright terrible, undesirable. But if there was one thing that did not interest her, it was commerce, business. She’d leave that to the Jews. She laughed, and with her beautiful teeth laughing into the darkness, she cried out that they couldn’t defend their philosophy against her. With her mouth and teeth she was shining like a French chanteuse. And I should believe her, she’d prefer even the School of Physical Education to a business school.

She had played basketball regularly in high school, they had a pretty good team, and sometimes they still got together to play, and she was a good short-distance runner but had to stop that too.

As she talked, I tried to think how I could take back my insulting remarks. What can I say about philosophy when I know nothing about it; it seemed more urgent to distract her with something lighter. I could have asked her, but I didn’t, what distances she ran and what her best times were. I couldn’t have asked anything else about running; I knew almost as little about running as I did about philosophy. But I wasn’t afraid that my ignorance would give me away, all I could think was that the whole stupid conversation was going in the wrong direction. The longer we talked, the farther I drifted from where I wanted to be, and we were drifting farther away from each other. She was taking me into dangerous waters, or even thrusting me out of the main current. And I didn’t understand why she used the expression Jewess, which in Budapest parlance was definitely a pejorative.

It was pretty clear to me that good manners required something other than what my mind needed and my mind was busy with something other than what my body desired. All three strong sources flowed simultaneously, but each was taking me to a different place.

I should have rejected something in her, but it was impossible to do everything at once.

We could not refuse to have this conversation, and I can’t say I wasn’t interested in what she said or might have said. I was carried along by a current of curiosity, and with her unfortunate expression she carried me even further, but while she spoke, my mind kept weighing something else and it felt as if I missed, individually, every one of her words. My mind was assessing what would be better and more comfortable for my legs and hands. And if I didn’t know what to do with my limbs, then it was pointless for my mind to want this conversation, which could not be halted, if only out of politeness. The further she carried me along with her words, the more strongly I felt there was something I hadn’t done with my hands that would be more natural, actually more necessary, than all those superfluous, flawed, and insulting words. But neither politeness nor my mind allowed my hands to do anything — I just couldn’t touch someone who abuses Jews at the drop of a hat and whom I don’t even know. Perhaps she had made me talk to her so I could get to know her. Yet I didn’t want her to speak, so I interrupted her, spoke into her speaking. I had to extricate myself from the dangerous current of my lie, and I was deadly afraid that she would literally make me drift away in the current of her words, that I would miss or already had missed something important. I wanted to get back to the place where we’d started, where my legs and hands had been condemned to idleness and were busy either taking me toward her or trembling. In other words, I felt I must not lose time — not a place, not a conquered territory, but time; time was the possession I might lose. It was as if we had already enjoyed a brilliant golden age, and if she carried me further with her words it would be like accepting a paler, silver age. As if in the former it was possible to touch each other’s face with our hands but now it no longer was.

I asked what she would have done if it had been a stranger who followed her.

She saw it was me.

When did she see that, and how did she.

I saw on her face that she was reluctant to answer.

Perhaps she preferred to go on drifting with the words.

Her gaze was now circling in very different areas, around my eyes, gliding across my mouth, continually touching my forehead, where it lingered, as if it had found something there, and I liked that very much. Perhaps she wanted to continue talking so she could find what she was looking for and she wouldn’t have to touch my stubbled cheek, either gently or rudely. In fact, I was very curious to know what her touch would be like; I wanted her touch. We were standing very close; from below, she was looking up at a place she wasn’t reaching out to touch.

She’d caught sight of me, she said reluctantly, when they were closing up the store.

I didn’t notice that you did.

Because she does this more adroitly than I do, she doesn’t stare so obviously and irresponsibly, and still she sees more than I do.

But now she really must hurry.

Where are you hurrying to at this time of day.

If I wanted to I could wait for her. She motioned at the church, indicating that she would be going in to it. And then her husband was coming to collect her.

This was like two blows of a cudgel, that’s what my face must have shown.

She started to laugh, as if taking revenge for the earlier insult, though she seemed a bit ashamed. At the same time, I recovered from another daze, a deeper one that did not include her. And I fell into a helpless fury, which she had provoked yet was now only observing, coolly, innocently. Or was happy about. That was her revenge. I did not understand anything in the strictest meaning of the phrase: nothing. I did not understand how I’d gotten mixed up in this situation, and I didn’t know how I could get away from her quickly. What did she want or what did I want from her. Why am I still so careful not to turn my anger loose.

What had we talked about, what subjects, what had I spoiled, with what, or why did I even exist.

But then why did she say I should wait for her.

Right away I heard the stifled rebuke that had found its way into my voice, which sounded like the shout of a quarreling man; hard as I tried, I couldn’t do much about it and saw her face turning cold as ice.

No, she did not say I should wait for her, not at all. She asked me not to wait for her in front of the store.

While we spoke, we could hear intermittently the sound of the organ from within the church. And the wind kept on roaring.

Really, she didn’t have to tell me not to wait for her.

Why should she, if this is what she wanted.

Wanted or still wants, I asked, on the attack.

Wants, she replied innocently.

Her gentle impudence and the glitter of her huge eyes so enthralled me that I became even angrier with her — or with myself. But then how would I defend myself against her. I asked her why she hadn’t told me not to wait for her today but tomorrow, another time, the day after tomorrow or sometime when she didn’t have to go to church and her husband wasn’t coming to collect her.

If she works the afternoon shift, her husband always comes for her.

I had never seen him come for her.

Because they always meet here. This is something she didn’t care to let her boss know, whether her husband or someone else comes for her. Her older brother is a deacon in this church.

What this means, then, or what she means to say, is that this whole thing makes no sense or is completely hopeless.

Even if I did wait for her.

If that’s what she means, she would have told me not to wait but to get lost.

But that’s not what she said.

But then she could have told me to wait for her after the morning shift, because then she wouldn’t have to go to mass and her husband wouldn’t come to collect her, either.

It seemed I kept repeating the same tune. I have said this before, it’s boring.

What, am I here to amuse her.

That’s how I vented my anger, that’s what I kept on insisting, incredibly and ridiculously, even in my own eyes, as if looking for a tiny crack where I could hide, probably making myself more ridiculous; but in fact I kept wasting time with my questions so I could leave with my dignity more or less intact.

No, I shouldn’t be angry with her, things like this disgust her, it never occurred to her to say something like that — or ask for it. She might have said it, no doubt, but she’d never want to be entangled in dark little lies like this or entangle others in them. No, she loathes this type of secrecy with all her heart. I probably misunderstood her. She likes to talk openly about everything. She’d just told me why she hadn’t been able to talk about anything in the store. But she wouldn’t keep secrets from her husband, why should she. She didn’t understand why I didn’t understand.

Because it’s not understandable.

But what don’t I understand.

Or maybe I do understand but don’t want to. Or I’m afraid I might misunderstand her.

Now she must really go into the church because they are almost at the Elevation of the Host, but still, it would be better if I told her what I didn’t want to understand or why I didn’t.

I don’t want to offend you. Please, do go in, and I’ll leave.

I shouldn’t go away now.

Not now, I’ll go once you are inside.

Still, she asks me not to go.

Leave it to me, all right.

All right, then she won’t go in.

I don’t want to offend you with anything, even if you stay out here.

She really can’t imagine how I could offend her.

By leaving, for example. Or if I didn’t tell her what I was thinking about. That’s already two examples. Everyone can be offended.

My own words made it clear that this woman was playing a role and had assigned a role to me too — an unfamiliar but most intriguing role.

And I could see how defenseless she was, precisely against this sort of thing. But she didn’t want to be protected by lies and self-deceptions. She did not like it when something was kept secret from her; true, she herself had no secrets. And she did not like things turning out unexpectedly, though she was fairly flexible.

I told her it was just like that for me too.

That makes two of us.

I said this didn’t sound too good.

What didn’t sound good, what was I objecting to, and what do I want anyway.

I said it was very simple. Either I’d like to leave right away or I’d like to understand why I had come in the first place.

Wonderful, she said, laughing, and asked if I always busied myself with such quintessential questions. As to this particular one, we can answer it very simply. In all probability, I came here to talk to her.

I said, if she knew so well I wanted to talk to her and not someone else, and she didn’t mind, then why was she making my situation difficult. And frankly, I didn’t understand why she had to go to church and to confession. Or why she would need her husband for it.

She didn’t have to go to church or confession at all, and usually didn’t, since she lived in sin consciously and inveterately. But for a few weeks she had been studying rituals, and the concept of sin interested her from a theological-historical point of view. But I should know that she does not exist without her husband. Anyone who wants to talk to her, it’s like talking to her husband.

They tell each other everything, anyway. They grew up together. This has nothing to do with the Catholic Church, her brother, or confession.

Still, I can’t expect her to keep it a secret from herself that she wanted to talk to me.

Well, that’s all.

That simple.

But why would she think I’d like to talk to her husband, whom I don’t know. Or how on earth could I have known they’d grown up together.

No, she hadn’t thought about that, and she leaves it up to me whether I feel like waiting for him.

For God’s sake, what did she think the three of us would do together.

She hadn’t thought of anything special, and she certainly didn’t want to alarm me with debauched thoughts. But since I asked, she could repeat that she must have thought of something like this: I would wait for her while she was in church, and afterward she and her husband were planning to go to someone’s house, to a party, and if I felt like it I could join them. She definitely did think of this, more precisely, such a thought did occur to her. But I kept asking so many senseless questions that she hadn’t had a chance to mention it.

And what if I don’t feel like going to someone’s party right now, and even less like talking to her husband. Or what would she do if her husband didn’t feel like talking to me.

Nothing would happen, no problem, and at least we’ve talked about it.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about. What we’ve got, then, is only this nothing.

Furiously, she held her peace.

There is nothing, I shouted.

I’m talking nonsense.

I said, in that case I am very sorry that I’m so obtuse. Obviously, my talents do not reach this far.

But if I really wanted to leave, I should go ahead, of course. Ultimately, she didn’t want to make me do anything I didn’t want to do, and she couldn’t, anyway.

On the one hand she knows very well she could; if she couldn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here like a jerk. On the other hand I don’t want to go away so much because if I did, I wouldn’t have come in the first place.

Well, that’s really very witty, she answered, sharp and sarcastic. But she was afraid I had no more time for further witticisms.

I didn’t understand that; I said I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why this was witty.

While we were talking I paid no attention to what was happening around us, though I must have seen and heard more and sensed every smell and odor more keenly than before. Now suddenly everything changed. As if she had pushed me out of herself, making me feel like a drunkard. I understood neither the words nor the sentences. Only the fragrance that emanated from her enormous hair, full of glittering beads of drizzle, from her soft white skin under the collar, and from her bare neck — perhaps only that fragrance had not changed. Her posture had changed, the color and tone of her voice had changed, and her comportment had changed. It was as if with my sense of smell, stunned by the acridity of an exceptional perfume, I were trying to reach her true fragrance while becoming so deeply immersed in both fragrances that I couldn’t hope to separate them. It was improbable that we were still standing here in this storm, roaming over each other’s face, knowing that it was all hopeless. I should have jumped into the Danube from the Árpád Bridge. I planned to leave here as soon as possible, yet I couldn’t even give up the enjoyment of hopelessness. Or perhaps it was her fragrance that kept me; the gusty wind thrust it toward me and carried it away from me.

And she had a contradicting sentence for every one of my words; I could not allow that, but she wasn’t going to allow anything either.

She laughed again — my uncomprehending face must have looked funny. I sensed that a long time was going by, but there was another computation of time in which not even one of our shared moments could have passed and only the surface of everything could be touched, where everything remained hurried and volatile.

And, as if because of the words, we only snatched at issues in a desultory way, unable to talk them through to the end.

She motioned to me to look behind me.

A car was parked along the curb. I remembered having heard it stop there.

I looked at her and then at this odd, shiny automobile from another world, from before the war. I couldn’t decide what to do. I was furious, pouting about the way she might be forcing me to do something senseless. The person at the wheel did not move, seemed not even to notice us. His face could not be seen, he must have had a coat on, maybe a leather coat, and for a few moments he remained but an indifferent shadow. The windshield wipers kept swishing. And then he must have lost patience, having to wait so long. He leaned across the passenger seat and threw open the curbside door; his movement sizzled. People started coming out of the church, the organ sounded its loud farewell with great blows of air.

Don’t be angry, but I’m not coming, I said. I won’t. I said it as someone whose self-respect was important, but by saying it only once, I couldn’t make myself accept this declared intention.

When would she see me then, she asked, without the slightest change in her face. No annoyance, no sorrow. Raised eyebrows, engraved in her forehead. Perhaps her large eyes and pursed lips awaited an answer, but whatever my answer might be, no response would touch her being. A face made of large, white, motionless, and indifferent fields.

She looked so lovely that it hurt me to say what I was about to say, but I said it, I don’t know when we can see each other again.

And in that very instant her husband honked.

He barely touched the horn; it was nothing but another signal, but now the woman too seemed to lose patience. The various fields on her face twisted in anger, she pulled up her shoulders a little as if ready to attack. She shook herself, became ugly, and then yelled into my face to stop shitting around, what the hell was I shitting around for about a stupid little thing like this.

Now it was my turn; I burst out laughing. I said, all right, let’s not shit around. But it was easier to say that than to follow her and also satisfy every unexpected demand of the new situation.

The Lovely Angel of Revenge

Baron Schuer took his customary place at the large oval table as head of the family; Countess Auenberg sat opposite him, at the place to which the lady of the house had shown her. They were in the smaller dining room, which was used on weekdays. Its walls were covered in deep-green silk embossed in old gold; its white-lacquered neo-Baroque furniture was upholstered in the same silk; double doors and two large windows gave onto the terrace and because of the summer weather were left open.

One could see down the enfilade of rooms.

The two of them began to talk politely, rather coolly even, a bit offhandedly, as if barely able to control a mutual dislike. Even though from the very first word they felt such an urge to converse that they scarcely had the patience to await the other’s responses. As if they had spent too much time on the high, neutral plane of politeness. While beneath them, in the depths, beyond the formalities, they saw all sorts of other things — nimble fish, gently floating water plants — which in a little while they would dip down to obtain, without breaking off their mutual glances, rapidly filling with increasing joy.

For long minutes after the maids had left silently, having served the cold fruit soup topped with whipped cream in cavernous Rosenthal bowls, incredulity and shock reigned around the table on account of the two of them, shock underlying the restlessness and the continual babble of voices; the others, despite their formal discipline, felt the maddening whirlpool-like tug of a potential scandal.

That’s it, Schuer cried to himself, so pleased with his idea that he could have jumped for joy, as if arriving at an important station in his life. This did not necessarily have amorous significance, at least not directly. She will create the right conditions for me in Budapest, and once again he carefully scrutinized the young woman the better to see who it was whom he had to win over for his undertaking. Yet he couched his professional plans, which had arisen because of her, in terms of endearment. As if to say, all I need to do is touch her, and she will bloom.

Oh, why didn’t I think of this before.

He saw clearly that she was the being he should have waited to marry, no one else.

They did not acknowledge that in their great bewilderment about each other they were talking at cross-purposes while hearing and understanding the words of the others at the table, who, prompted by a similar bewilderment if not embarrassment, had been interrupting their duet and one another too. The two of them heard this duet they were creating — how could they not — but they didn’t understand the others, because they were no longer curious about them. This time he must not be too hasty, Schuer warned himself. Not every day does one meet someone who will be a queen tomorrow.

Nothing changed in the pleasantly cool dining room shaded by gigantic maple trees, or outside in the splendid rose garden, to warrant a mutual emotional excitement of such proportions.

Someone should have stopped talking, if only out of obligatory courtesy.

As if a thick, sonorous jet of water had bubbled up from the well of mutual admiration and adoration.

He had not waited for her, how could he have; he hadn’t known her, had had no idea she existed. Ridiculous, he said to himself. But now she would be useful, together they would establish the new institute, which he definitely needed, and this woman, a Hungarian queen, would be his patroness, which is quite impressive any way one looks at it, even though he knows these are empty words, a ludicrous self-consolation. The more likely object of his enthusiasm was the young woman’s beauty and elegance. He felt her as irresistible, had never met anyone like her.

Everyone noticed it, even the cautious maids busy with the soup. Amid much giggling and pretended secretiveness in the kitchen, they passed on the news to the cook and the scullery maid preparing the sauerbraten. This is a delicate operation in any circumstance; one must be quick so the meat doesn’t cool while being sliced.

The two of them had no sense of the impropriety they had put on public display. They both believed that in the circumstances they were well disciplined, and they admired themselves for their self-control.

Yet it was more like being on the brink of an earthquake.

Because they wanted more, wanted everything, they could not deny themselves to each other. How could they look into each other’s eyes without plunging into the whole scandalous story of their years spent without each other, and how could they not relate even more and more while readily absorbing the totality of images offered in the raw sight of the other’s solid, lithe physicality. The lady of the house, the three well-behaved children, the severely dressed Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein and the nurse, Miss Bartleby, a rather pale, heavily freckled, unattractive Englishwoman with frizzled red hair, who was in charge of the children even at mealtimes — everyone around the table saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears what the two of them were up to.

A brilliant and indifferent early afternoon in late August with the unmistakable hints of approaching autumn’s flavors and barbs.

This is what is happening to them. In the eyes of both there shone an alarming, wonderful feeling of being both surprised and privileged.

Countess Auenberg felt only one thing, that after three days of absence, she had reached home in Schuer’s sparkling eyes.

Although she couldn’t have said where she had come from or where they might now go together. Will this stranger sitting opposite her supplant her adored betrothed. She was so lost in Schuer’s glances, glittering with cold lights and cruelty — and she saw, how could she not, that he was dangerous, a man to be feared — that his incredible nose failed to disturb her, on the contrary. Yet it kept staring at her threateningly, in just the way she had complained about to Karla.

But it did not occur to her that her infidelity might be scandalous or that she was wavering in her love for her betrothed; she was suddenly busy with many objective details. Other considerations could not have entered her mind, on the contrary.

Because he was here, sitting opposite her.

Even if she were to see them together, she would mix up the two men’s faces and mainly their figures.

That made her happy — the sensitive, invulnerable mixing of the two, its enthralling realization. She spoke to him in rapid, whirling words. As if she were speaking to an idol. She spoke to him with her strong, courtly Viennese accent, herself incredulous about what she was experiencing and what she was now telling this idol so loudly, distracting her own attention from the impermissible attraction and its realization. This is not a human being; this is an idol. Not once did she turn to Baroness Thum, who also insisted on speaking only to Schuer, disregarding the lady of the house too, who, with loud arrhythmic comments, remained the loneliest person in the company. Well, the day before yesterday when — no, Schuer cannot possibly imagine — led by the charming Emmy Göhring, she laughed as she pronounced the name, she was absolutely charming, she laughed again, they paid a visit to Arno Breker’s atelier, here on Käuzchensteig if she wasn’t mistaken, wonderful, it’s probably not far from here, you probably know the place, isn’t it marvelous, you must go see it, he is a marvelously great artist, well, she became aware of an astonishing bust in one of the atelier’s abandoned nooks, on a pedestal such as one sees in ateliers, but she didn’t mention that, overwhelmed by the obscene and brutal sight of all those tight bundles of muscles, in the entire studio she had found fascinating and reassuring only this smooth naked male shoulder. At first glance she thought, she could not believe her eyes, that the artist had probably modeled the bust so lovingly on her fiancé. She could not describe it any other way but that it had been made with love, though she knew nothing of the creation or existence of this sculpture. Nor did she say, how could she, that she had not yet seen her fiancé’s naked shoulder, how could she. She worships her fiancé in his impeccably tailored suits, though she knows, she giggled to herself, that she should worship only Jesus Christ.

Still, she wasn’t curious about him naked, nor about his shoulder either; in fact she wasn’t curious about any part of him. There will be a time for that. Which she feared — what she would have to do then.

Schuer could not have known what the Hungarian countess was laughing about to herself as she talked to him with such abandon and why, at the same time, he shuddered at her sight, or why this shuddering made her more desirable. Even though he wanted nothing from her. I don’t want anything. She became in his eyes a little like a lovely angel of revenge. Only he could not understand why he thought this; on what or whom might this angelic being take revenge. On his terrible marriage, his entire infernal life until now.

Or if the artist had not modeled the bust on her fiancé—she had to get closer to it, something about it was suspicious, she, by the way, worships art and worships artists too, she continued with the forbidden word and in her immoderately loud and piercing, shrill little voice — then the artist must have modeled it on himself.

That is what she wanted to see, but the ladies kept following her everywhere.

She personally didn’t care if sometimes these modern artists with their modern works were shocking. She failed to notice the chilling effect these words provoked around the table. The moment she uttered them, all three women and even Schuer fell silent. Miss Bartleby, who until now had been trying in a subdued voice to restrain the children — and who, to the great amusement of the family, was considered a passionate devotee of the spirit of national socialism — could hardly contain herself. Unless asked, she was forbidden to take part in conversations around the table. Modern temples should be erected to house their shocking works. This remark caused a cacophony even louder than the previous one; everybody was trying to drown out the countess’s impossible sentences. And she did not say aloud how the artist with his entire physical presence had reminded her of Mihály, even though she could see that Breker had a terribly weak character, that he was a terrible sycophant. At this moment, it seemed to her unbearably impossible that her listeners knew nothing of Mihály. Perhaps she should talk about Mihály. But then it turned out, she continued easily and in the same breath, that the statue depicted neither the sculptor nor Mihály but the wonderful architect Albert Speer, whom she had not had the good fortune to meet, but she was sure they must know well that he was the Führer’s favorite architect; she said it like that, her voice full of tenderness as she pronounced the word Führer. With which she quickly rectified some of her earlier rudeness, as her listeners interpreted it. Even though the tenderness was directed at the model of the bust rather than at Hitler, whom she quietly abhorred. Following Count Svoy’s advice, in this instance it would have been incorrect to say Hitler. She had to accept that this was the way Germans expressed their natural affection for and unconditional trust in the man she found repulsive in every sense of the word. And demonstrating to the Germans that she was independent was not the only important thing to do, in this she agreed completely with Count Svoy, since over the centuries the Auenbergs had become great Hungarians; she also wanted to exploit for the benefit of Hungarians the fact that given her bloodline and her name she belonged to the Germans.

Which Schuer, involved in this subject, had instinctively sensed in her face and figure when he first saw her approach on the garden path alongside Baroness Thum. With some satisfaction he acknowledged that she had an exemplary Nordic physique. Even Eichstedt, that skeptical scientist, would be happy to see such pigment-poor skin and hair, so supple and slender a figure, on which there was nothing superfluous, the long face with its slim nose, with its exceptionally high base and unusually close-sitting nostrils; with their sensitivity, these features moved him to the core. He will start an affair with her, a secret affair. He lingered long on her unpainted lips and then sought out her barely protruding cheekbones to observe how she spoke, chewed, and swallowed, in a way to possess, from an anatomical viewpoint, the young woman’s bite.

But she was sorry that Eva Braun was not present, her lips said.* Another topic her listeners would not talk about, and they were appropriately taken aback by her mention of the name. She had heard so many good things about her, she must be a charming personality, they probably knew her. They fidgeted, what is this foolish little Hungarian countess going on about, and began to speak over and above her scandalous utterances, so as not to hear them. Speer’s charming wife, Margret, she was there, however, in the dazzling array of ladies, Magda Goebbels and the others, all of them. Any man would be happy in the company of so many dazzling women, but she had the definite impression that they had left this great artist cold. Artists, after all, are busy with their art, and for a great artist we forgive everything, do we not. And with that remark, and an amiable laugh, she glanced around at her table companions, all of whom were preoccupied with themselves and, except for Siegfried, talking about themselves. Countess Imola received no answer, but this did not seem to bother her. Margret Speer is a dazzling woman, she continued, instructively, as if going more deeply into the subject might elicit curiosity. Her modesty is so winning, and the two of them quickly established a friendly relationship, a few words sufficed and then they understood each other, they would visit each other. Margret would come to them in Fánt and she would very happily visit the Speers in Berchtesgaden. Her shyness and objectivity were touching. Downright touching, she said, with an embarrassed little laugh underlining this impression of Margret, who said, yes, she also could not fail to notice the resemblance between the physiognomies of the two men.

It is probably no accident that the two of them are such good friends.

So much openness and chatter charmed everyone at the table, as if they now forgot about her earlier scandalous statements.

Men are truly enviable for the profound friendships they develop among themselves. Men are peculiar, very peculiar. Women are not prepared for things like that, for such great, heroic friendships. Their pure feeling for one another is what makes men psychologically so strong, in her view. And they need their strength too, because somebody has to protect the women. Still, everybody was surprised to see that somebody would have such a likeness, which was indeed beyond all human imagination. Perhaps we should read the Bible a little more carefully. Or take it more seriously. Because if we are all created in God’s image and He wants it that way, then there can’t be too much difference among us. And how in the world could there be so many likenesses in one big pile, she thought in Hungarian, which seemed disdainful enough for her not to say aloud. However, the true focus of her disdain was Bolshevik and Nazi ideas of equality, neither of which was to her liking; they both seemed to her to be terrible populisms, inundating many societies with their vulgarity. And Schuer surely knew this too; he must have noticed that in bodily shapes there are other similarities around the world. Perhaps everyone recognizes this, but not everyone is fortunate enough to live in proximity to his likenesses. Schuer, with such splendid achievements in his research on twins, as the baroness had told her with great enthusiasm, must have an explanation for this phenomenon. She regaled him with the story of her official visit only to mention the shocking phenomenon for which she could find no scientific explanation. She could call this nothing but a miracle, a miracle. Surely there was a scientific explanation, of which she, because of her feminine ignorance, was not aware, even though she had taken biology courses in Prague.

She wanted to let the man of science know this fact too.

She’s always had a special interest in genetics, and she mentions this now only because when she mentioned it this morning she had the impression the professor thought she’d done so only out of politeness. Which offended her a little. How is it possible that there are so many multiple resemblances and simultaneities among different lines of heredity, would Schuer be kind enough to allow her to pose this question directly to him. But she would not say aloud that when, as part of the crowd streaming out of St. Anne’s Church in Dahlem, Schuer stopped in front of her, she glanced at the four of them linked in their physical reality.

She glanced at Mihály’s lookalike, who was the likeness of these two who in turn were each other’s likeness.

I’m losing my mind, she thought in Hungarian, what a dizzy person I am, I see him in every man, she said to herself, though she could not have said who she was seeing in whom among the many likenesses.

She knew Mihály best of all, of course, which is why she thinks they all resemble him, but perhaps it’s the other way around, that he resembles them. And the attraction of this thought was so strong she could not banish it.

Another reason she did not say this out loud was that at the table, very near a full glass of water, she was whirling within her own thought and in dread of what she felt about it. If four such insane likenesses may occur in creation, if Albert Speer can resemble Arno Breker so much that it seems as if Breker had modeled himself on the architect, who happens to be his friend, and these two so eerily resemble Schuer — this is how her insane calculation went — whose shape is eerily like Mihály Horthy’s, then there must be countless others like them who keep exchanging their personalities and profiles, in which case we are talking about the possibility not that one of these men will by chance become her husband, with his own or someone else’s personality, but that any one of the others could be her husband.

What frightened her most was that she accepted this thought from herself without protest and broke down every barrier in her thinking. Even though she had been raised to fear and dread black magic, reject esotericism, and disdain superstition. There were secret passages, then, among individual lives. Which she has now uncovered, found the trail of, but should not tell anyone about lest they think she’s gone mad.

Frightened and suspicious, she asked herself whether these unhindered secret passages existed only among men.

Whose powerful probability she could not but feel in the muscles of her thighs; she should have spread them a little more, which she did, but in her fright she closed them again, modestly. She had only to look at this variant sitting across the table from her to feel that she was insanely attracted not to their personalities but to their sheer physical forms. These men have no personalities. In which case, she has gone mad. Her mother must have left her and her sisters for some reason like this. The big trickster probably strongly resembled their father; more correctly, their father was only a doppelganger of the trickster and their mother had to leave the copy for the original, and so she made short shrift of exchanging one for the other.

And why shouldn’t she have done it; it was logical that she did.

She’d never experienced this among women, women are very different from one another and like to be different; they make a point of it. In contrast to women, men are interchangeable. You may choose any one of them, this other voice whispered, you have to pick one; for them it’s all the same whom they impregnate. In her feet, growing tense in her comfortable shoes, and in the roots of her hair she felt the excitement of the thought; she could not let go of it. She was pursued by the thought that she must choose not the copy, obviously, but the original; the thought made her brain ache, yes, not the forgery but the original. There’s no denying that she also felt this torturing thought in her breasts, becoming sensitive where the silk blouse touched them, and in the depths of her womb. She continued to chat rapidly and with inspiration about the many-faceted indecency that this truly great artist allowed himself to commit against the wife of the famous architect, let’s admit it, very boldly. If he were not an artist, one could not forgive him such immoderation.

He had told the visiting ladies about the emotional admiration and devotion he had felt for Margret’s husband from the first moment of their first encounter, and with this admission he no doubt embarrassed them all — the ass kisser, she thought in Hungarian, every artist is a born ass kisser — but Margret’s husband was also the man whom he could thank for his wonderful commissions, she added aloud in German, laughing.

Still laughing, she asked Baron Schuer, deep in his own monologue, whether he had the good fortune to be familiar with the amazing story of the two great artists’ encounter.

She could easily call it a meeting of giants.

Her overheated, shrill little voice sweetly cut through the other voices.

Frankly, she was happy because she was no longer thinking about the oddity that she would have to leave the proximity of this man and return to the Auenbergs’ city palace in Tárnok Street in Buda.

The sun-drenched riparian city sank back into its dim and chaotic past.

The umbilical cord snapped.

Although she received no answer, she probably did not expect one, just as she had not responded to every aspect of the hubbub Schuer had made when he volunteered, unasked, those details about his youthful experiences in the Thuringian campaign.

For the time being they could both be satisfied with what they had found in each other’s eyes and quickly made their own.

She bewitched Schuer with her shrill little voice, and the scientist’s warm, lecture-trained deep bass had a similarly profound effect on her. Because, you know, Countess, it so happened, and with your permission I’ll tell you this one last story, before moving out of the area we should have stopped in Friedrichroda to put things in order there too. The two of them made each other’s body resonate like a sound box; with vibrations coursing through each other’s corporeal matter, neither of them had to pay attention to what was actually being said. They could look at each other’s hands, lips, neck, or forehead, whatever their clothes left exposed to the eye. While the three children and the three other women, their pupils dilated, marveled to see them being gradually and improbably transformed. Spooning their soup with painful precision, the hostess and the two other women tried to engage in conversation on so-called neutral topics. They ostentatiously pretended to be sharing lighthearted banter and paid no heed to its content, hoping that the other two would awaken from their scandalous shamelessness and return to earth.

The two continued to converse politely, spoons in hand, hoping to distract everyone’s attention including their own from all that was happening publicly between them.

People in Schuer’s house never sat down to lunch before two o’clock, and they always ate very simply, never to excess. Which was as much part of the strictly followed family tradition as was the obligatory tastelessness of the food. Occasionally cooks would quit the job out of conviction, when they reached the point where they could not endure banishing all taste and character from the food. No surprise that in this house the preparation of sauerbraten was a hotly debated issue. At the Schuers, the cooks had to be sure that the food was never composed of ill-smelling or odorous raw ingredients, for the smell of raw meat revolted Schuer, and though he never went near the pantry or kitchen, the very thought of being under the same roof with uncooked meat also revolted him. Yet a good sauerbraten must, before being cooked, marinate in its vinegary, spicy sauce for at least ten days or even three weeks.

They all found it unbearable to sit there as if nailed to the stiff, high-backed, barely upholstered chairs along with other people with whom they had nothing in common. Baroness Karla did not understand what might possibly have tied her only a few hours earlier to this shocking female, who with perfidious naïveté was concealing her intelligence and about whom, despite her unpleasantly shrill, hysterical little voice, there had never been anything little-girlish even in her girlish years. Still, she couldn’t get enough of the younger woman’s premature beauty. Suddenly she felt compelled to accuse Imola not only of being ignorant of degenerate art — the reason for her idolizing these particular modern works — but also of having lost her innocence.

Though she’s engaged, she’s not ashamed to behave like this with the first man she meets.

Baroness Erika disdained but also felt a little sorry for the showy young lady.

She’s crazy, she said to herself, excusing her guest, yet it was in these painful moments that her mind clearly formulated the haunting yet always repellent realization that the father of her children was not a human being; she’d always known he was an animal. Who obviously would have preferred to get up from the table in his home, grasp the hand of the ever-twittering crazy woman, and with no consideration run off with her, leaving behind his beautiful, happy family life.

They didn’t know what to do with their destructive emotions; they couldn’t shed their self-discipline so suddenly.

Though Baroness Erika nervously repeated to herself several times the helpful bourgeois commonplaces reserved for just such occurrences — I’m dreaming, this cannot be true, I must be dreaming — that is to say, though she tried to diffuse her anger by saying one should not acknowledge painful reality, she could rise above it by talking over it, and clichés often help one navigate seemingly hopeless situations, she herself was behaving compulsively. In a loud voice, she combatively matched every sentence spoken by someone else with one of her own, saying something about the soup they had been served, that the Schuers cannot bear cinnamon or clove in fruit soup, which in the first years struck her as very strange, it’s not always easy for a young wife to cope with the odd eating habits or peculiar demands of a husband’s family; something about the rose garden where blooms continued so abundantly until November, about pervasive smells emanating from the institute, from the entire research area, from her husband’s clothes, from the clothes of their guests, frankly, she can’t stand the smells; something about the children’s progress — she uttered proper and improper bits and shards of sentences with no apparent logical relation to one another, but with which she stepped over the boundary between inner monologue and public conversation; in fact, she didn’t know what she was saying.

She asked if the others were aware of the smells, because she was, even as she spoke.

But the others paid no attention to her. What she was feeling now, what was guiding her, was a terrible dream she was having about her husband. She could not have imagined he would be so starved for this common kind of love or that he could tenderly love anyone. She had no tender feelings for him. They respected each other and had no reason to be dissatisfied with that. And yet she now had to witness his meltdown, his disgusting hankering for this hysterical Hungarian woman, virtually devouring her with his eyes. Baroness Erika was convinced that neither of them needed intemperance like this breaching their obligatory mutual respect. Life was ruled by a strict agenda, and she had never thought there was a nobler or morally more satisfying task than to carry out that agenda, a task that required a complete human being.

Saturday nights were the only times when she was assailed by a physically somewhat burdensome and potentially sordid anxiety: about moments when, accompanied by a long moan, her husband reached the end of his all-too-short pleasure. The baroness would have wanted more. Which she would never have dared to wish. Instead she tolerated what there was, if that was how it had to be, and offered no initiatives. She was careful not to fidget afterward with the inexplicably deep currents of her wildness, not to awaken the man who, having wiped his member, wet with sperm and vaginal secretions, on the edge of his silk-poplin nightshirt, dropped into a deep sleep as if on schedule. The nightshirts had to be hidden in different places so the maid would not find them, and every week she would sneak them into a batch of clothes to be soaked so the washerwoman would not notice them either. After his aggressively large and satisfied body relaxed in sleep, he often and for long periods continued happily to pass wind, of which he was wholly unaware. Or, if he was startled awake by it, for the sake of them both he pretended not to notice. Twice it happened to the baroness that just as she lay there helplessly on her back, disgusted and rigid in the fetor emanating from under the cover and with her very wet thighs trembling, perhaps because of the strength of the aversion she felt for the man, rumbling waves of her own gratification swept across her. Her body made itself independent. It was as though her insides sensed a tectonic movement and then her entire disciplined and pampered state of mind dissipated like the crest of a gigantic wave into individual drops.

Without her being able to do anything about it.

She could not even scream, yell, or bellow exultantly.

When her consciousness returned, she felt filthy again.

She could barely wait for Monday, when she could change her nightclothes and her husband’s stained and sperm-smelling nightshirt. The washerwoman did not understand why she had to starch the professor’s nightshirts more heavily than his shirts. So he wouldn’t wipe it on them, let it hurt if he does things like that. The baron did not dare say anything about the stiffened nightshirts, because then he might have to specify what he did with them. The baroness would not have liked to acknowledge a human organ and its attendant physiological phenomena of which, even after the births of three children, she knew hardly anything. Later, though, she always hoped that maybe it would happen to her again, and so she did not mind that the man dropped off into satisfied sleep, always at the same moment and always in the same way.

While she listened, mildly disgusted though not completely denying her moderate interest either, to the bursting bubbles of his gases and to his snoring, all she had to do was touch herself, just barely, the temptation was great for it to happen again, but she did not do it, she resisted, no.

She thought it best not to have it happen, for she was ashamed of pleasure and ashamed of her readiness for it.

Occasionally, Otmar wanted it several times.

She could not reject him on every occasion.

That was another reason it seemed more correct for her to remain calm and not to tremble.

Whenever Otmar awakened himself by farting too loudly because of his efforts, in a developing dream, to stop his falling body at the edge of a precipice, he would grab wildly at his wife to stop her trembling, pry her thighs apart, and, bent on satisfying her, brutally penetrate her. Although he did not much feel like it, he did it because he was aroused by his wife’s heavy body trembling vulnerably under the covers, and he would keep pushing and thrusting like an obstinate willful child who wants everything and at once, because he lived in the belief that the more expediently he pushed and the deeper and more brutally he penetrated, the greater his wife’s pleasure would be.

During such moments there was no room for formal tenderness or obligatory attentiveness, which otherwise functioned flawlessly between the two of them.

Schuer believed that the male had to struggle with the tempting resistance of the female for the sake of propagation, and her eternal frustration from not being satisfied was temptation itself.

That was the brick wall he had to break through.

And when that happened, Baroness Erika’s knees and thighs would go on trembling mildly into Sunday morning.

Which ruined her entire day.

She never talked to her husband about her Sunday migraines; she never connected the aches in her ovaries and her irregular menstruation with these terrible nocturnal scenes, and that is why she could not mention them.

But even if she’d known what she might naturally discuss with her husband she still wouldn’t have done it.

She didn’t want to spoil their lovely family life with such matters.

Now, however, she was witnessing a nightmare from which she had to wake herself immediately. It won’t last much longer, she told herself, she will concentrate on the children until it passes, she said to herself. She wants to wake up so she won’t scream because of the pain.

What are you doing to me.

She couldn’t imagine herself capable of suffering so much mental anguish; her heart was nearly breaking, yet this slightly alleviated her painful Sunday headache.

What have you done to me, and what more are you going to do to me.

The children behaved best, though they were exhausted by the adults’ peculiar behavior; Miss Bartleby found herself very busy with them. Mainly, she had to restrain the two little girls. Ortrud, sitting on plumped-up pillows, the smallest of the three children, cried out or made gurgling sounds when she sensed tension among the grown-ups, and this elicited quieting hisses and lengthy admonitions from Miss Bartleby. Children were forbidden to speak at the table. And Sieglinde began to swing her legs like a bell’s clapper under the table. Which in the Schuer household was also strictly forbidden. Both Miss Bartleby and the nanny were told not to put up with it even for a moment. They were given permission to hit the children’s bare feet with a stick. They often voiced their view that a little child should never be unsupervised and should never become irresponsibly absorbed in himself, whether in company or alone. These views referred to something the children did not understand.

We do not cut boiled potatoes with a knife on our plate; we break them up with our fork.

This, however, the children knew.

We do not spread jam on black bread, only on white. They did not understand that, but they had to accept it.

In fact, the adults assumed that the uncontrolled monotonous swinging of legs would lead the children into bad habits. Too strong and uniform a pleasure, for too long a time, would travel from the muscles of their little legs to the base of the thighs, and then the child would be doing it all the time. Miss Bartleby had to check for reddening of the girls’ little vaginas, because that would be the telltale sign. Or the boy’s little penis might grow erect as the result of the seemingly innocent foot dangling, which applied continuous steady pressure to his two little testicles. But the Englishwoman was now so busy with the scandalous sight before her and with her own politically motivated agitation that she did not notice what was happening under the table, what was brewing among the children.

While the adults, individually and together, kept on saying what they had to say, interrupting one another, knocking down another’s words as soon as they were uttered. Baroness Thum was the loudest; the children feared her the most. She was now profoundly ashamed of Countess Auenberg’s provocative behavior, and she was ready to burst with her own multilayered jealousy. But they were all talking past one another, above one another’s words, increasing the cacophony, even though they knew they should listen to the end of what anyone else was saying, which, in fact, they heard very well. Baroness Thum had to calm herself down. And Siegfried turned more and more pale with his concentrated attention; he was the only one who did not open his beautifully shaped mouth.

He was an exceptionally anemic, pale little boy who frequently fainted, which made his father even more dissatisfied with him.

He was too pretty for a boy; adults looked at him with a certain aversion or uncertainty. He was actually waiting for his little sister to kick him under the table, deliberately or by accident, which would release their accumulated pent-up desire to become unruly. He longed for a little pain, a small clandestine punishment that would allow him to let loose with the aggression he had kept in check.

Whenever he passed out, they threw cold water on him, slapped him in the face, put him in the bathtub all dressed and turned the cold shower on him. For days after the slaps his father coldly gave him, his jaw would feel dislocated and he would find speaking difficult. In vain he promised never to faint again. In his heart he did not blame his father for the strict preventive measures he took, because he knew, oddly, that his father knew what a devastating fate awaited him, his son, even if everything were done for him or against him.

He admired his father and regularly spied on him when he went to urinate.

He looked up to his wonderful father as to someone who had once managed to avoid such a fate, with the aid of great self-discipline.

As if the two of them knew everything about each other.

His father had a marvelous fate; everyone respected and admired him. And he secretly wanted to acquire his father’s habits to avoid the impending danger. Although he did not think he could possibly follow in the footsteps of such a wonderful man. He worshipped his powerful father so much that when his unsuspecting father left the toilet, he would sneak in, lock the door, and, bending over the bowl, inhale the smell of the urine; he was ecstatic, the smell of his excrement, oh, the odor of every little remnant and excretion of his; he was put out if he could not indulge himself in anything of his father’s. And to sniff his father’s soiled shirts and underpants in the hamper, because there too he fancied he could smell his urine.

He had no way of knowing how tactful and intimately considerate his father was toward his mother, an exemplary mother and wife. She did not quite like the Saturday-night interludes, and therefore in the second year of their marriage, after she was finished with the confinement following Siegfried’s birth, Schuer decided he’d do it for her only once a week, not to burden her too much.

One cannot say it wasn’t difficult for him, but in truth he never did it the way he really wanted to, so it was no great sacrifice.

And thus, in the late afternoon or evening of almost every Wednesday, while staring at the smooth white wall, his lips parted and eyes half-closed to evoke the carefully selected and by now well-worn memories of the wartime barracks — in which not copulating men and women but their limbs and sexual organs played leading roles, images far removed from what he would have realistically desired from his wife but allowing him to enjoy a second weekly occasion, in Luther’s name, so that he would not be neurotic and irritable with his wife or co-workers — he quickly satisfied himself.

They could not have known that when the little boy stumbled out of the toilet, he fainted because of his enormous love for his father.

If she kicks me again I’ll pinch her mercilessly.

A dangerous emotion was urging the little boy against Sieglinde, who could not have known what dangerous thoughts were occurring to her powerful father because of that woman. But perhaps she did sense something dangerous about her, and sense that her father’s thoughts were for his family. Not to mention that the young woman’s fragrance, the unusual colors and lines of her clothes, inclined her to a special predisposition toward a wide, elegant great world of whose existence she was otherwise unaware.

They could not have known that the way of the world was changing around them; the reckoning of time was about to be jolted, and they would be jolted too, even if they had known of the impending change ahead of time.

In fact, the powerful and wonderful father apparently did nothing but, as it were, display his knowledge to the high-ranking foreign lady and elaborate on his scientific plans. He himself could not have said whether with his oft-repeated words he was trying to conceal the emotional turmoil taxing his entire body and soul, or, the other way around, he was releasing all his emotions so as to court the elegant woman vehemently, to lure her into his scientific plans so that later on he could make use of her influence. Suddenly he did not understand how, in the midst of explaining his scientific concepts, his judgment and thinking could slip so out of control. When and how had he strayed into such a delicate biographical subject, what could have deflected him, to speak of something he should not mention. He had not spoken of it with anyone for twenty years; and when he was supposed to report on the events he had witnessed to the freshly appointed district attorney of the republic, he had lied brazenly, not out of necessity, but with his head held high because that was what comradeship demanded.

As if he were standing naked before the young woman with all his moral burdens. He wanted something important from her, though he could not tell what might be more valuable than his work and good name. He slid back twenty years because of the young woman, because of her he became lost in his own biography, and despite his power and reputation and scientific knowledge he could not have told at this moment who he would become, what person, who might start his life anew.

How, in what system or order, does one formulate a sentence in oneself; he did not know.

Who does she see in him, this young woman who should have nothing but contempt for him, if she knew who he was.

One speaks first, and only then realizes what one wanted to say.

This, however, happens in an instant, like slipping or tripping.

I’d be unworthy of such a woman, he thought, and looked at her innocent delicate limbs, even though he believed he feared her.

But then he can’t know who it was who’d been talking from his body and through his mouth, or who the person was who, in advance, saw through his plans that could not be put into words.

He did not say aloud that there wasn’t a word of truth in anything he’d said though there were many true things in it; the temptation to say this was great, but this is something one can only desire and cannot come near doing.

Please, do not be so gullible about me, he wanted to warn her, to protect her from himself.

Which made him see her more clearly, because, after all, he had deprived himself of her possible effect on him. Your respect feels good, even though I know you wish to flatter me with it; still, I accept it because I melted, I have been melting in your presence. But please, do not forget for a moment what a laughable character I am, even in my own eyes. I am not a trickster, you don’t have to worry about that, I am a clever scientific official, which is no mean thing, but without significant scientific achievements, though I’ve yearned for them all my life. He became very sentimental about himself. Perhaps I shall achieve something significant yet. This woman should be a queen, who would keep her from it, it must happen.

She shouldn’t run off with a nobody like me.

After a while, he managed to regain some of his mental composure and, to retain it, continued to talk uninterruptedly and with great aplomb. He mentioned only subjects he had talked about a hundred times before; at most he had merely to adjust the intonations. Perhaps he played a bit more strongly on the emotional strings. Which caused his disagreeable memory to work harder. Of course the prisoners whom the volunteers had to march to Friedrichroda that foggy spring morning had not been shot while trying to escape, as the official report had said. Which ones among you have small children, step forward, you miserable commies. Good Lord, someone thought with alarm, was that the sentence. Run, damned communists, they yelled, and when those prisoners believed they could disappear in the fog, among the trees, that they were free, could go home to their small children, then it happened.

Which ones among you have a wife at home, damned communists, step forward. Actually, he was glad this is how he remembered it and forgot nothing. Who among you have widowed communist mothers, you damned commies.

Who is an orphan, they yelled at the last one, you damned communist.

By the time they reached Friedrichroda, not one of the twenty-seven was left.

But what am I saying, he interrupted himself in a practiced conversational tone, stopping himself from uttering another word on this topic and returning quickly to a favorite subject of his, which, although it did not put his life in an adventurous or colorful light, made him feel safer morally.

These realizations, then, provide medical science with means, he was explaining, and you should never lose sight of this, Countess, means by which we can control and steer the biological fate of our people. We are no longer at the mercy of chance, as are less fortunate nations, and I hope you will forgive me for what I am about to say, because it must be obvious that I am thinking of Hungary.

Anthropologically, the most interesting part of the story was that the second group of these communist beasts ran off into the depth of the forest with the same inner conviction as the first group had — run, damn commies — even though in the fog everybody had heard the dull reports of bullets whizzing among the trees just minutes earlier.

There could have been no one who did not know what that meant.

Run, damn communists, run.

Think about it, Countess, if one has a chance to do something good and noble for the sake of one’s grandchildren or one’s entire nation, will a man with the right sensibilities pass up such an opportunity, no matter what the price.

It seems that one’s instinct to escape proves to be stronger than one’s reason, he said to himself at the same time, the animal in one has the advantage, and the human in a person comes afterward, ready to weigh things.

He did not answer his own rhetorical question because he did not wish to carry his pathetic tone too far.

Individually what we are doing here are scientific odd jobs, nothing else. But the work we do together on the national scale is indeed something big.

His fellow soldiers enjoyed it, he was thinking, and they couldn’t have been less educated or cultured than I, because this wasn’t a question of culture. To share their enjoyment after their first shots, that was wonderful. We live together or we die together. And the damn communists can always be destroyed, down to the last one, and that’s what makes the manhunt enjoyable. Which is not without etiological interest. Why does one enjoy something done in a group that one does not enjoy doing alone precisely because the group forbids it.

Who disconnects the inhibitions.

Or perhaps it should be asked the other way around. Why should he condemn it if he enjoys it so much.

Countess, perhaps you won’t be distressed by this, because no matter how highfalutin it may sound, we must say it aloud, he said aloud. Together we have lifted ourselves out of the lamentable march of world history. With the racial laws in place, the grand work is ready. About this neither American nor Norwegian, not even French researchers have major doubts. They envy not our achievements, they too have come close to such achievements, but our situation and our laws.

They were brigands, communist beasts, he said to himself, as if with his own emotions he were defending himself against his own aggressiveness.

We consider the nation as a single spiritual and biological unit, and therefore have seen that it was beneficial to reverse the order of things in medicine as well, he continued, sounding most self-assured. He had so much practice in public speaking that it was easy for him to let his attention run on parallel tracks or to divide his thinking. Schuer was appreciated at the university because he never said anything surprising; he did not do his thinking publicly. He knew well that people liked to hear only the kind of speeches they have heard before. And because he did not like to be bored, he busied himself with different subjects while composing his speeches.

We consider our primary task to be not the curing of the individual but genetic prevention, he explained, the treatment of the nation’s body, which means filtering out and annihilating the sick or flawed inherited stock, because we are working for the benefit of a healthy and racially pure genetic stock. It is for this purpose that we have established our network of race-nurturing physicians. One can only regret that the Hungarians cannot come along with us in this great work. For the first time, we have raised the latest racial-biological findings to the level of state interest, and you will believe me, Countess, when I say that this is an unshakable edifice.

We have in our hands a key with which we can daily open nature’s jealously guarded strongboxes.

Genetics has penetrated closed areas that only the gods could view, until now.

And there are only organizational obstacles to sharing this knowledge of ours with the Hungarians. From a racial standpoint I personally see no problem at all. We are familiar with the biological laws of our people’s life and therefore it is no secret with which races we see it advantageous to renew the inherited stock of our own.

At this moment, Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein fell silent, alarmed, because not even her amplified inner monologue could stop her from realizing where her boss was headed.

She thought every claim that they had reliable knowledge about anything was ridiculous.

But just this once she managed not to get involved in the discussion.

For a few moments she ruminated over the question whether Schuer’s new ideas might thwart her Roman plans.

Health and illness, talent and madness, the rise and disappearance of entire families, nations, and peoples occur not only under environmental influences, explained Schuer to the countess, as inveterate individualists or Bolsheviks would like us to believe, but also under the influence of internal hereditary laws or, if you wish, Countess, of closed hereditary chains. One might say they are the results of independently inherited narratives. Which means, put simply, that we is a more important unit of nature than I, and any nation unwilling today to accept this hard rule will not be here tomorrow. Hereditary stock determines in advance the mode of the mutual effect occurring between a living organism and its environment. And this, Countess, no one can change throughout an entire lifetime. That is how you should look at it. In the best case, one would consider this peculiarity one’s personality. Or, because of one’s upbringing, for example, one might consider oneself a woman even though half of one’s inherited stock is a man’s.

Involuntarily they glanced at Siegfried.

The countess appeared to follow the man’s eyes, which absentmindedly looked at but probably did not see his only son. The boy remained an uncertain outline, a blurry blond spot with a concomitant, constant bitter feeling. No matter what he did, this boy would not realize the hopes he had for him. For a short while they both looked at him, looked at him with indulgence, as if he were their shared child, and there was something moving and reassuring in this for both of them. But the little boy did not notice their glances, because with angelically closed eyes he was waiting for his kid sister’s kick.

If not now, then in the next second it would come; he wanted to force the kick out of his little sister, he wanted it.

Or the other way around: the other half of one’s inherited stock may belong to a woman, but because of one’s upbringing one will consider oneself a man. Nevertheless, one is not a hermaphroditic mechanism — I say this to allay your fears, Countess — though every human being is close to being one.

If I’m not embarrassing you with this frivolous claim, I must say that one has a bisexual potential.

Racial purity is not a purpose in itself, let there be no misunderstanding between us about that, it is not an obsession but rather the biological prerequisite of the survival of the races.

He did not want to mention his proposal just yet; perhaps after he had finished his business with Karla, when the guests were leaving.

But he was on guard, observing the effect of his words, and he sensed boring into his side the destructive power, seething with jealousy and professional objections, of Baroness Thum’s tense silence. He was grateful to her for not expressing her hostility out loud, for not spewing out her venom. The reason he continued to speak so professorially, nicely cutting off and eliminating any possible questions and doubts, or veering off in different directions, was to keep the countess, who was very receptive to his ideas, from developing any misgivings about their future cooperation.

However, this game of playing it safe had little to do with professional reality.

To make the available data useful for purposes of national health and to use it to establish, at least retroactively, a new system of racial screening backed by the law, they needed as large a collection of data as it was possible to gather. We would need God’s data, he sometimes thought, annoyed at his own unpardonable way of thinking. And he had his doubts, because they had been operating a huge, expensive system on the strength of presuppositions — neither during their research nor retroactively could they justify the system on their meager available data — and since he believed their method of data gathering was inadequate, he had to consider the existing data irrelevant too.

We are confirmed materialists, this is what he thought, who try to grasp creation’s data in some material form. That is to say, his concern was that they conceived of human attributes as mere matter or as material manifestations.

This is nonsense; among sane people, this should be nothing but an object of ridicule.

The most important, strictly confidential sources of the palpable data were handled by Assistant Professor Mengele. Everything they regarded as so-called mixed or Jewish material. From Rome, however, they received data with which they could confirm African and south European sources of their comparisons, while from their colleagues in Oslo and Stockholm, where they had no independent institutions, they obtained data relating to Nordic peoples who had remained racially relatively pure. In his desperate hours, he saw clearly that not even another ten institutions and another ten generations would be enough to gather the necessary amount of data with which to confirm or reject a presupposition of any kind.

Budapest should long ago have been the center of research on Slavic and Balkan interbreeding. But he did not dare entrust his otherwise ready and willing Hungarian colleagues with the most confidential data, the research relating to the penis, vagina, and sperm stock.

Under the patronage of this woman, however, it might be possible to establish a German institute in Budapest paid for with Hungarian money, where he could quietly exile the baroness, and then he would not have to maintain an ongoing work relationship with Professor Orsós either.

But at the moment he feared not only the baroness’s professional judgment — her silence was hovering in the air — but also his wife’s rancor. He was guided by no inner conviction of any kind when he tried to do everything the way his wife wished.

Heredity and environment, these ancient movers of evolution and progress, he was saying, beaming with obligatory professional enthusiasm, are clearly separable. We must separate them.

There was no stopping now. He could no longer anticipate or comply with his wife’s wishes, which he did not understand himself.

I must stick with this pathetic little tone, this overly professorial little tone, he told himself, and he commanded himself to be patient.

It can be done nowhere but in the people’s state of Germany. The inherited stock and the conditions of a healthy environment must be guaranteed by nothing but the people’s state, which therefore must place the individual too under strict scientific supervision.

He burst into laughter. Except for Baroness Thum, nobody understood his expansive good mood, swollen with brutality and violence.

Yet Baroness Thum was busy with something else at the moment; taking advantage of the opportunity, she took a quick good look at Schuer’s teeth. She did not want to miss the chance. From this angle, she saw hardly any fillings. Although with such a brief glance she couldn’t catch every irregularity.

Of course, by now she’d had time to conclude that all three of Schuer’s offspring were idiots.

And anybody could see that the boy would be a pederast.

Maybe she should try to have a more thorough look at the roof of his mouth.

Today, the future of peoples can no longer be settled with conventional weapons, Countess, and if in the future, as part of your high office, you will be dealing with questions like this, you must keep this always in mind, that everything will be decided by the level and quality of the knowledge of genetics.

The maids had taken away the soup bowls and with great show and ceremony carried in, through the rooms, two large gravy bowls and on two great platters the elegantly sliced sauerbraten, garnished with steamed cabbage and gigantic potato dumplings, which at the Schuers was prepared according to the recipe of the famous clergyman’s daughter, with all the attention and love due to national foods. They had to keep it a secret from the master of the house that first the uncooked meat had been marinated for a week in a broth made with water, red wine, thinly sliced onion rings, and vinegar, spiced with bay leaves, pepper, and clove, and poured in the stone dish so as just to cover the meat. Several times a day, with ritual seriousness, they had turned the beef over in its bath.

Schuer laughed happily because to this day he could not help being happy about the circumstances he had just described. He could not get used to the wonderful thought that he’d a part in it; he was proud of it. He lived in a state that had adopted the findings of his science.

Think about it, Countess, he cried with rapturous boyish enthusiasm. The Führer is the first statesman in the history of the world who not only acknowledges and understands the achievements of research in racial purity and genetics, but has raised them to be the guiding principle in the administration of justice. For him, nothing is more important than a healthy nation.

Countess, please, perhaps a bit more gravy.

Which was a warning to the maids not to stand around staring but to make another round with the gravy bowls, and mainly a signal for her husband that it was high time to find another topic for table talk.

Oh, yes, Baroness, yes, please, you’re very kind.

Karla, dear, wouldn’t you like a bit more of this tasty sauce. Pass this to the baroness, will you. Our cook makes this exceptionally well. We’ll let the ladies have the recipe, unless of course you are already familiar with it.

Would love to have it, who could refuse such a generous offer.

Isn’t this the natural way, Countess. I can’t bear secret recipes.

Why should a recipe be kept secret.

Baroness Thum, however, rudely motioned to the maid that she could go, should not even come close with the disgustingly thick gravy.

And, as if happy about the unexpected silence and attention that she managed to provoke with her impoliteness, she turned toward Countess Imola and said loudly that she had known old Milton Bradley, he was a great mind, a great scientist, and a fascinating man.*

Schuer quickly and very expertly expressed astonishment.

Karla, you don’t say, I really had no idea you knew him.

They played this irksome little game all the time; to test the other, to see whether he or she could see the other’s closely held cards and, if possible, find a way to deceive each other. They could gauge the status of their altercation by the irritation shown on the other’s face. The goal was to drown the rival in a sea of contradictory information. This time, however, Schuer pretended to be surprised so he could come to his wife’s aid and shunt the table talk onto a different track, the conversation that he himself had initiated and steered so incautiously in its present direction. His wife did not appreciate scientific discussions at her table. With her good bourgeois attitude, she disdained miserable scientists anyway, had nothing but contempt for all of them, no matter how famous. They could impress her, at most, with their wealth. They always began talking innocently enough, but within a few minutes they would either speechify heatedly or arrive at details she did not consider it proper to hear.

Especially at the table, least of all at the table.

But, dear Otmar, I even told you about their summer home in Wyoming built right next to a loud rushing mountain creek.

How could you be so forgetful, Otmar.

But more important than anything else, he was among the first ones, perhaps the very first, to pay attention to the characteristics of pigmentation, those finely shaded differences. Indeed, in the process of definition one can grade the differences infinitely, and this is what enables us to describe racial peculiarities. If we are initiating the countess into our little professional secrets, I think we shouldn’t keep these details from her. The primary differences show up in the color of hair or skin or even eyes, and in a measurable way, provided one has determined the appropriate means and method of measuring. He could not have known it, old Milton. He did not find it. But I do know, because I have found it. He worked with, as it were, sensory methods.

He simply described what he saw on the skin. He had moving words for it.

If you study these details, Karla, I can say that you actually catch creation at its constitutional, or immanent, work. That’s what he said to me, verbatim. Now, please, you may imagine I was very interested in this, in catching creation doing its constitutional work. I’d say nothing could interest me more. This is how old Milton gave a religious or esoteric dimension to the issue, so we wouldn’t stand helpless in the face of creation. I was fascinated by him, by his America, by his world. Because of their Negroes, Americans can’t avoid posing these questions. You can see it for yourself, Karla. All human beings are put together of the same materials, but each one differently because of his or her particular line of heredity. We have to admit that the entire completed work cries out for an esoteric interpretation. The countess should also know that Bradley was of course interested primarily in bastards.

He examined things by looking at them from the wrong side, as it were. He’d notice a crude difference between two things for which he had no explanation. Well, he would say, let’s see what happens when these other different elements are intermixed.

And now she chuckled just as her boss had done earlier — a sign that, again, only she and her boss understood around the table.

Bradley could not have — please forgive me, Otmar, for arguing with you — but he could not have provided a definitive explanation and neither can we, she continued, wiping tears away. A person can have at best a definable idea. That’s the extent of one’s science.

Finding a trail in the jungle and following it.

Today the baroness discourses about philosophical questions of science in a very sentimental frame of mind.

Oh, not at all, answered Karla pensively; her response caused such a deep silence around the table that the gentle rustling of the maple trees could be heard.

Despite Bradley’s paternal advice, I decided I had better start out on a trail I’d found myself, not found by others, she continued quietly a moment later.

Karla, that’s a very heroic statement coming from you, Schuer exclaimed; now he wanted to end the scientific discussion yet was happy they were showing the countess their spiritual teases and professional tussles.

You’re making fun of me, Otmar.

On the contrary, I admire your insight.

An eye, as you know, has a definite cross section. It can be sliced in two; one can make up to fifty sections. That’s all. I’ve gone further than others in distinguishing among the parts, en tous cas. Nothing has interested me except these sections, she continued dryly; she was enjoying her scientific superiority.

I had no other ideas, but at least I had this one.

She was happy at least to have come between the other two, however briefly.

The sections gave more differential answers than old Milton’s exemplary literary descriptions.

But I don’t necessarily deserve credit, she cried.

Credit and scientific achievement do not necessarily go hand in hand anyway, Karla, Schuer remarked, if only for the sake of balance.

That’s correct, the baroness replied contentedly.

Schuer let her have this set of the match because he knew what still lay in wait for her.

Then there was another quiet spell, with all of them silent as people are when they turn inward for brief reflection. Baroness Karla had managed to wedge herself between them, which not only made their feeling of belonging together painful, but also called their attention to what they had done, and made them realize that because of Karla they would never again be this close, so innocently and unconsciously.

And who knows what else might have happened to them in this seemingly calm moment if it were not for the cry of pain.

Sieglinde shouted out a surprisingly short cry, like a strong groan of mental anguish, and everyone looked at her in surprise. As if they were acknowledging her personal existence for the first time, as she sat there in her dark-blue puff-sleeved little dress trimmed with rickrack.

She kicked me, cried the little boy, beside himself, by way of explanation.

Because he pinched me, the little girl said, and her cheeks flooded with tears, tears of moral outrage, he’s so mean, so mean, always mean like this.

But her self-discipline was functioning very well indeed; she spared them the sounds of crying.

Which made the little boy lose his inhibitions, and he began shouting desperately, she was the mean one, how could she be so mean, she should be ashamed because it was just the other way around, she was the mean, evil one.

Then the third one started to cry, as if some unprecedented unfairness had befallen her too.

The commotion might have lasted only as long as it took the children’s mother and Miss Bartleby to rise threateningly from their seats. The two older children, knowing their obligations, stood up, resigned and very pale, and the little one slid off her elevating pillows. The guests could not imagine that this sort of thing was happening at the table for the first time. But before his mother had grabbed him by the collar, the little boy was looking at what he’d left on his plate with some alarm.

As if he were expecting punishment for that too.

Except the guests realized not that he was looking at his plate but that he was about to collapse right in front of their eyes. Before they could rush to his aid, his pretty head knocked against the table and, with a groping hand sweeping off napkins and utensils, he crashed between the shoved-aside chairs.

This prompted the two hesitating guests to rise too, and only Schuer remained seated for another few moments. Although in cases like this his upbringing required only that he remain calm, he also issued a contrary command.

Follow the ladies’ example, and if they are not sitting, you stand too.

The same scene again, said the baroness dryly. You will excuse me if I leave you briefly — Countess, Baroness.

Now Schuer stood too, but he did not lose his equanimity.

Oh, I’m so sorry, cried the countess with feeling, I am really very sorry.

Even though obviously no one needed to hear her sentiments.

Suddenly she seemed to sense the silence in the house.

With practiced movements Miss Bartleby and one of the maids picked up the helpless body and, while the other maid hurried ahead, carried it out — with no special caution.

Please, don’t let this upset you, said the man as gracefully as he could, let’s finish our meal, and with his spread arms he asked them to take their seats again. He gave no explanation for the strange event. Not a word.

Not a single sign of worry.

Which both ladies found strange.

Baroness Thum sat down quickly and politely, almost defeated. She smiled a little absentmindedly to herself, and raised her fork and knife. Countess Imola stood for an additional moment, as if bewitched, her gaze following the three women carrying the little boy through the enfilade of rooms, the little girls’ shoulders, in their rickrack-decorated puffy-sleeved little blouses, shaking with suppressed weeping. Echoes of her childhood, alive with loneliness, came crashing down on her. A childhood filled with sameness, uniformity; the way the two little girls’ shoulders in their identical little blouses trembled identically; it was as if Imola had also reached the end of uniformity’s magic.

Which was not a feeling, not a decision, not a thought; it was something that simply happened.

She did not dare look at Schuer again, or say anything. Would not have dared ask him what had happened to his son, which for him seemed usual and routine. She couldn’t have said where their conversation had left off. She was deeply ashamed of having dared to compare this terrible father to Mihály Horthy for even a moment.

How could I have done that.

How lucky it was for her and her sisters that, when their mother had left them, fate saw to it that they had their kindly father, however defeated, with whom they could weep together.

Shortly the maids returned.

The countess found their zeal repulsive — and revealing too — the way the dining room with its very bourgeois furnishings exuded gloom, the way the maids carried away the superfluous settings, indicating their vast experience in removing traces of scandalous scenes. Quickly and tactfully. This practiced, easy behavior especially irritated her.

What have I done, she was screaming to herself, what have I done. She had no idea what she could have wanted earlier from this strange man, and in what science she had wanted to stick her nose.

She had enough social experience to know that accidents like these are usually followed by other accidents, and three days later everyone will have forgotten this one. She might have become unfaithful because of a man who is ready to cheat on his wife, no, not just that, who tortures his children, whom he cannot restrain.

As if she were trying to calm down by claiming that a man like that was worth nothing and she didn’t even want him.

No one broke the silence.

Rather, the adults dutifully continued their meal, eating everything that remained on their plates in a very proper way. They smiled politely and preventively, clattering improperly with their knives and forks on the fine porcelain. They also had to listen to the noise of the others’ chewing and swallowing. Even as a little girl Countess Imola had found this maddening, she couldn’t understand how her kindly, tender father could chew so loudly. This was the only reason for them to speak, so they should not have to hear one another from such an intimate proximity.

One cannot chew and swallow so politely that one’s jaw, teeth, and tongue won’t make champing and smacking sounds.

Maddening.

Yet in light of the receding minor family tension, it would have been considered just as inconsiderate to leave food on one’s plate. And cutlery cannot be used on porcelain without making a noise; no such fine porcelain exists.

And there are no perfect manners either.

They finished their meal quickly enough, though, and the maids took away their plates. Countess Auenberg could hear herself making her report to her woman friends of this visit. Charming people, but I have never sat on such an uncomfortable chair.

At the Schuers, the serving tray was not carried around a second time. Everyone ate as much as he or she had taken or asked to be served the first time around. In the painful silence they did not have to wait long for the dessert, which slightly surprised, in fact irritated, the countess, accustomed to the French habit of pacing the courses. Done this way, the meal was not a repast but merely a hurried intake of nourishment. Luckily, dessert consisted of small portions of an excellent soufflé glacé au café, each portion ornamented with a single roasted coffee bean. Without being noticed, Countess Auenberg pushed aside the tiny coffee bean with its oily shine in the shell-shaped saucer; Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein and Otmar Baron von der Schuer, however, dutifully took theirs into their mouths and loudly crunched them between their teeth.

Schuer was first to speak once they had ended the long-lasting crunching in the frozen silence of the house, and once all three of them, ceremoniously and relieved, had touched their large damask napkins to their lips.

With her permission he would accompany the countess to the living room, he said in English, probably by accident. He and the baroness had originally planned to withdraw for a brief conference and he didn’t want to alter their plan, but he was certain he could count on the countess’s understanding and patience.

The countess, wearied by some strange distraction that might also be called coolness, neither answered nor looked at him.

He sincerely hoped, Schuer continued, growing hesitant in the absence of a polite response or look from her, that the company of his wife would more than compensate the countess for their brief withdrawal.

But the countess seemed unapproachable.

Eventually they’d have coffee together, Schuer added, almost as if against his will. This remark managed to startle the countess and remind her of her obligations; she complied immediately.

They left the dining room amid profuse polite murmurings.

Von der Schuer lingered to issue some instructions to one of the maids, and then for some time, happily, Countess Auenberg remained alone in the smaller salon.

The moment the door of the study closed behind them, Schuer and Baroness Karla ceased using each other’s first name.

This was not a conscious decision, the switch happened instinctively. From familiarity they stepped back into the scientific hierarchy, which had nothing to do with their common birth prerogatives.

I see that the Herr Professor intends to establish an institute in Budapest.

I intend to appoint the Frau Professor to head it. And that means, beyond all the joy involved, that the institute should be organized there.

They were standing awkwardly, halfway between the door and the desk.

At first Schuer wanted to take his place behind his desk, with its four decorative lion’s feet. Then he decided otherwise, choosing a friendlier solution, and he pointed at the comfortable armchairs in front of the glass-covered bookcases.

Strangely, neither of them reached the point of sitting down.

Nor could they step free of the gravitational pull of each other’s proximity.

At this point, it was also clear to Schuer that, given the baroness’s embarrassing surprise, he should not stop now; he must strike while the iron was hot; the baroness’s face visibly paled and then darkened with a rush of blood.

Merely a fresh idea, he continued lightly and instructively, as if he’d never thought of keeping secret — and couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to — the very personal emotions that had nourished his idea. You won’t get the Rome institute, not while I’m alive, but you can help me get close to this young woman in Budapest. We both know, Frau Professor, that after a five-year hiatus it’s high time for us to open a new institute. We can delay no longer. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to the Frau Professor about now. I have two further subjects, both of them very urgent. One of them is personal, he said severely and dryly. It has to do with Hans’s misdeeds.

In his self-consciousness he took care not to pause between words. The other has to do with the long-drawn-out question of ownership of the Wolkenstein house.

I would like to settle these matters.

Although he managed to finish what he wanted to say, the baroness barely acknowledged the second half of the sentence and was already weeping so threateningly and loudly that Baroness Erika, entering the adjacent small salon, and Countess Auenberg, hurrying toward her to inquire about the little boy, both heard it.

What Hans, what misdeeds, what have you got up your sleeve.

Look, I’m responsible for this situation, exceedingly embarrassing for both of us, Schuer continued, rather loudly. Actually, I received the documents about Hans last week, but I simply had no time to look at them until this morning.

What house, what long-drawn-out question, what ownership would you like to settle, with whom, with whom, the baroness kept crying out, very rudely and harshly, and although her features hardened, her self-discipline kept them from becoming distorted.

The timbre of her voice did not slide upward as it would have in simple anger, but because of excess blood became dark and ominous, deeper, taking on a masculine tone.

The voices in the study could be heard in the small salon but not clearly, and the two women, chatting animatedly, strained to listen.

They were talking about childhood fainting spells, of the deep concern with which both parents had been following Siegfried’s development.

Disgrace, the insulted baroness shouted again, which the women in the salon heard loud and clear, and though they had wanted to speak over her loud words, they fell silent, as if compelled by a magic wand.

Please, Frau Professor, why don’t you sit down, please, let us talk sensibly about your son, the man continued, unemotionally, as one who knew neither fear nor mercy.

Of course, I understand you are upset.

Please, leave it to me whom I talk to, when, and about what subjects.

Schuer could easily let this last sentence go by, since Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein did not turn on her heel, did not move from her spot.

This morning, however, I finally looked through the dossier, he said, and he pointed to his desk, where a hefty sheaf of papers did indeed lie. Believe me that I offer you my friendly services with the best of intentions.

What are we talking about, what do you wish, please say clearly what you mean.

I must inform you about details of your little son’s examination, details you obviously are not familiar with, but as to their consequences neither of us can have any doubts.

The baroness, greatly agitated, wanted only to ask what kind of examination, what are you hinting at, what results and what consequences, damn it, and what has any of this to do with the estate in Wiesenbad; but she suddenly lost her voice or breath.

Might Schuer be referring to sterilization.

But she could not ask this question, because the awful suspicion gripped her that these swine might have not only ordered the procedure but also carried it out.

That is why Schuer keeps excusing his procrastination.

A strange moan left her throat.

Nevertheless Schuer answered her unasked question.

I’m afraid, Frau Professor, that the situation is even more serious than that.

A Startling Gratification

But we do have some kind of suppressed secret animal sense of which we are quite ashamed. It doesn’t say this is good or this is bad or ugly, because it has no conceptual language. It follows its sense of smell even though it has no nose. I simply wouldn’t have liked it if they’d taken the woman’s fragrance away from me; more precisely, I wouldn’t have liked it if it had been taken away from me too soon. If she’d left. If her husband or anyone else had taken her away in a closed car before I could taste this perfume to my heart’s content and roll it around under my tongue.

Although this sense has no eyes either, it can see things I cannot see. After all, it was not her fragrance — put more correctly it was not only or merely her fragrance that I clung to, but everything the naked eye could see floating around and about her, what emanated from her or what she was waiting and longing for that she hadn’t had before. This something, which could have been her natural endowment, her need, her being, or her soul, had nothing to do with her beauty. I said, all right, let’s not shit around anymore, and it felt pleasant to be suddenly and for no reason so lighthearted and indulgent, but in fact I only said yes to this ungraspable, unfathomable something, invisible to the naked eye; in no circumstance could I have said no to it. My animal being, perhaps my soul, wanted to arrest, accept, and possess her soul or simply to stay in the company of her animal-like being.

If she had said she’d now turn into a cat because she had to climb to the top of the church tower and I should turn into a cat too and follow her, I’d probably have said no. But at the same time I’d have thought to myself, all right, let’s.

I hadn’t been following her because I hoped that being around her would make everything take a turn for the better.

I followed her despite the possibility that my new situation might become unbearable at some point. Despite that, no matter what, I followed her. Later I might knock my head against a wall for my reckless decision, but I had to endure the pain. And I did, against all common sense, despite my upbringing, my sense of beauty, propriety, good taste, and proportion, despite everything that one carries in oneself as rules of behavior, despite the gold reserves of a good upbringing, despite everything one imagines about oneself.

Whatever happens, let things be. Everything, I said to myself, will take a turn for the better in a moment. Or next week.

My misery continued when I crawled into the backseat of their car. What gives me the right to crawl into a strange man’s car. We had not been introduced. And sure enough, I knocked my head on the door frame and my shin on the back of the front seat. I said hello, but he kept looking out in the darkness and did not return my greeting. Did he think that to all appearances I was crawling into a stranger’s car to seduce his wife. As a motive it wasn’t too convincing, as a procedure not very distinguished or imaginative, not to mention that it was true only as an illusion. I didn’t want to seduce anyone; I had never seduced anyone. I cried out, moaned, and huffed with pain and laughed, wanting to indicate politely that I knew how laughable I was, how ridiculously I was behaving.

I’m clambering after a woman who doesn’t even know my name, yet I had already lied to her. Again I tried to say hello to this strange man but again he pretended not to hear me. I deeply despised myself, with all the contempt I could muster, for being so indulgent. And it was for this reason, while I was crawling in, fumbling and blundering and knocking around, that I took a good hard look at this man in the darkness, the way one animal looks at another. Who is the person who, like me, has been so weakened by this woman. The rival was a handsome, large, well-developed, razor-thin dark specimen. Despite his raw beauty, there was something frightening about him. It’s also possible that at that very first moment I discovered a trait in him, or became frightened by a feature, that he didn’t even possess.

After all, I was not in control of myself at that point and I accepted the situation, against all reason, because of the woman. How else could the man look back at me if not with an awareness of rivalry. As if, with our rising animal repugnance, we were already searching for a hold on each other, figuring which of us was the readier for the struggle, was stronger and more flexible. Everything could be decided by the first glance. And decided it was. In this case, the body was more important, his body, mine, his strength, his adroitness, nothing else. He was nimbler than I, more cunning, tougher, more open and more direct, better prepared for repeated clashes. But not stronger in the psychological sense of the word. It was animal instinct that made me see that I would have to clash with a body that was hardly more than skin and bones, tense and taut with sinews and exasperation.

About which my civilized self, of course, kept quiet.

The feeling was physical, a shared physical feeling, mutual, since he looked back at me in the same way; he recognized me; he sized me up. I knew more about men than he did. And I’d also spent my early years in a boarding school; the bases of my experiences had been the struggle for food and, even more grimly, for the attention of the women taking care of us.

But it was impossible to determine which of us was more provocative. His lack of knowledge, or the insincerity of his knowledge, made him vulnerable. His physical attributes made him seem ready to attack, yet in our situation I was the attacker. On the surface his behavior was not hostile, of course, though at first I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t return my hello. But he had hastened to help me, tipping the front seat forward; go ahead and crawl in if that’s what his wife wants. He was sorry about my head bumping the door. And then, following my moans, he chided himself for letting me hurt my shin too. His countenance made it instantly clear why he wore that suspiciously threatening leather coat. He wanted to appear larger, stronger, and more severe than he was. Such leather coats were not sold in regular stores. Men in the secret service wore leather coats — not the lousy little secret agents, of course, but the bosses. And high-ranking cops. One had to be a privileged character to get one’s hands on stuff like that. Party bosses in the villages, nachalniks as they called themselves, also wore leather coats. At least twice a week they’d have themselves driven out in their huge black cars to the territory, as they disdainfully and arrogantly called the countryside, and when they emerged from their cars with a great hullabaloo they wanted to look like bailiffs of the old landowners, now hounded out, or like Bolshevik commissars in movies from faraway Soviet Russia. This man was more than ten years older than I, around thirty, but in his scrawny features he preserved the look of a vulnerable adolescent who always invites attacks, always smells enemies everywhere, and always wants to quash resistance.

I pretended to approach him in a friendly way, as if hoping to bridge the embarrassing situation with affable behavior. No one with decent bourgeois manners finds it hard to put on an amiable face no matter how embarrassing the situation or how rotten the mood. Which is not dissembling but a basic navigational rule guided by common sense. Once I was out of my apartment, I thought I ought never to be a burden to anyone, either with the miseries of physical existence or with encumbrances of the soul. I no longer look at myself in the mirror or arrange my clothes; I am decisive and satisfied with myself. So despite the awkward situation and the repeated rejections, I was happy to extend my hand for the obligatory how-do-you-do. To which he again responded only with a cool look. He did not want it, did not desire it, or simply would not waste time on it.

Obviously he hadn’t been brought up as I had. He seemed to be not from the country but from the outskirts of the city. In fact, this contributed to our clash, though he probably didn’t notice it, given the nature of the thing. He couldn’t have known what I saw as missing in his conduct. At most, he might have sensed that I did not acknowledge his signals of rejection, while I had to pretend even to myself that nothing was amiss and I didn’t take the rejection too seriously either, given that bourgeois etiquette rules were not applicable. Not only because officially they were no longer considered valid, but also because I myself liked to disregard them when in certain local situations I sometimes found them still being followed. But I thought his eyes were beautiful, deep and penetrating; he seemed to protect himself with their coldness.

In any case he too had no choice; he had to pretend everything was just as it should be.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world that without any prior notice his wife simply brought along her latest discovery, her heart’s chosen one, who knows who else.

To give this impossibility some plausible form, theoretically he should have gotten out of the car to give his wife a chance to introduce me.

Without this formality I couldn’t feel right. After all, one can’t stay together in such close quarters when one hasn’t been introduced.

I could not resolve this embarrassment; I didn’t have the means.

Not only had he failed to return the most public form of cordiality, my hello, but he did not return my prolonged smile either. Granted, my smile was simply dictated by rules of etiquette and in that sense was empty, what else could I have done. Yet it can’t be said that he rejected either the conventions or me personally with his look; it was his inner self, agitated by repressed anger and constant discontent, that strained against me. We had not even closed the car door and he was already snapping, crackling, fluttering. That’s how he demonstrated his anger with his wife, as if he enjoyed being boorishly irritated, enjoyed violating every rule of good manners. He believed he had the right to find his own vulgarity charming. He could afford to behave like this with a complete stranger, said his face. He was in the driver’s seat, literally and in every other way. Or perhaps he let himself behave like this so I could witness his strength and authority, so I’d have no illusions regarding his wife. There was something unpleasantly puffed-up, swaggering, peacockish in his behavior. In his anger he let his voice rise, as if he were not sitting in a small closed space and the presence of a stranger did not bother him. I was deeply ashamed for the woman and for me too, that she belonged to such a handsome monster and insisted on staying with such a peacock.

And not surprisingly, everything crashed into pieces within seconds.

His voice was deep, stentorian, filled with threatening reserves. He was complaining about some booze, which they were supposed to have brought along for the party, but which his wife had forgotten. He should have known. They had arranged that she would bring it from the store, but she’d never ever kept a promise to do what they had agreed she’d do. And then, changing his tone, he proceeded with ominous, fussy, and cold precision to re-create the dialogue they’d had that morning, what he had said and what she had answered. And he kept interrupting himself, yelling, that’s how it was, wasn’t it, roaring into the dimness of the car. He received no reply. But he went on and on, expansively and with uncontrolled gusto, as if these uninteresting and unimportant details, his tiniest actions, his every word, had enormous importance. He probably knew no limit in this display of self-complacency; or rather, he seemed to believe that merely remembering all these details justified him and proved his incontestable claims. As if he needed every little proof because other people were always questioning his credibility, as if he had to prove himself before the world against ever-recurring hidden accusations. His wife was probably the greatest monster, suspecting his every word. Or could not retain a simple thing in that birdbrain of hers, he bellowed in the dimness, and she should try at least to find an acceptable explanation for her thoughtlessness.

Why can’t a woman ever listen to another person, ever.

Women are simply not yet human.

The woman replied to this with practiced and highly focused patience, that she didn’t know what women did or didn’t do and frankly hadn’t been thinking about the question of how far women had come in their progression toward full humanity because she’d been paying attention to important things.

I see.

This scene, for example, is not important enough to pay attention to.

And with that, something ended.

This is how she was paying no attention to her husband’s misery.

The wipers were grating and creaking on the windshield in front of us. One car door remained open, the wind was snapping outside, cutting, sending waves of spray inside. We were like a ship run aground and tilted on one side in the midst of the raging elements. I did get some air from the blowing wind, but it seemed as if air had been siphoned out from between the two of them. There was a mute, baleful, and deadly silence. From the backseat I could not see their faces, only two necks stiffened in stubbornness. I had no idea what I could do to help the situation. The car was an old sports car, a coupe, whose narrow backseat usually served as luggage space.

Probably the best thing in a situation like this was to acknowledge being unable to do anything and leave it at that. The two of them went on staring ahead of them; not even by chance would they look at each other.

Their shared life has ended; they have torn it apart, it tore apart. But then they couldn’t go anywhere together. I had no way of knowing that they did this kind of thing several times a day. There’s nothing left, let it end. And their reciprocal anger was thrusting me into mortal danger; there was no exit through which I could leave. They were aflame, their flesh smoldering in the heat of their breakup. In a moment I had learned more about them than was permitted by any rule of etiquette. Although they brought different edges, different moods, to their mutual decision, they each reserved their individual sensual strength for the other — and for no one else.

According to his original impulse the man would be silent for only a moment, only a brief pause, after his rhetorical question. Yet he wasn’t surprised by the woman’s cruel remark — on the contrary, he seemed to consider any further words useless, superfluous, and he let the rest of what he had to say drown in him — for he had anticipated her insolent indifference. His entire being slackened, although startled; in the end he was gratified by the woman’s disregard.

I retreated to the dark corner of the backseat.

I was close to the man’s boyish, thin neck, but he was closer to me not just in the physical sense. Dense, thick, shiny black hair covered the nape of his delicately slim neck. A startling gratification radiated from it. Not only did his leather coat have a strong smell but the deep odor of black-haired men emanated from his entire body. I envied and felt sorry for him; I hated the woman for having done this to him. I did not understand anything about what they wanted from each other or what might happen to me. I had no door through which I could leave quietly, taking my empathy for the man with me; I was wedged in by my attraction to the woman. I’d have been happy to get out, more for their sake than for mine. If nothing else, I grasped that the man had received proof of one of his ill-omened suspicions, and this made him happy. He was losing something else, but this palpable proof was more important to him — the truth, complete and undisguised truth, which he now had to face.

Not happiness but truth was more important for him. True, the woman was stronger and more powerful, but truth was at his side, he was right, and therefore he would not yield. They could both perish now; the complete truth was already in his hands for all eternity.

And what only moments earlier had begun as empty haughtiness, bullying, or showing off was now, in the long silence, being transformed. They weren’t thinking of me as a person before whom they had to display or conceal anything. I actually think they completely forgot that I was sitting behind them in the dark. There was something unfamiliar and unusual in this, nothing like this had ever happened to me before. And the man had no fury left in him; still sizzling, they both quickly retrieved their emotions. Huddled on the backseat, I could not help thinking that this had happened because of me. Now they were left to themselves in the darkness, continuing their inner altercation within themselves. The original subject of the argument had become unimportant or, as happens on such occasions, every movement, or the other person’s motionlessness and unbearable silence, became the subject of further inner debate. They forgot not only me but also the wind that kept slapping them with bursts of spray through the open door.

The thought that the woman had done this to me made me angry. She must have known what would happen. And why should I put up with this, not to mention that I couldn’t tell what else might happen between the two of them. Which of them would be the lucky one to squeeze a word out of the other; who was the winner; who’d be more nimble in finding a hiding place for the emotions accumulating in the silence.

The street shone black in the dim light. Gently, wearily, yellowish light penetrated the car’s drizzle-speckled windows. Someone closed the church gate from the inside; it clanged and I could hear the key turning in the lock. From my place I could somehow make out the woman’s profile; she shuddered at the gate’s clanging and followed the sound with her eyes; she was saying good-bye to her brother, to her missed opportunity, to theology. That was the day’s portion of philosophy. She would not look at the man for anything, not to mention her ignoring me completely. I could be as angry as I wished about their insolence. For their not waiting until I was gone to have their domestic spat. But how in the world could I leave. I continued my own idiotic inner debate. I wanted to hurt the woman; to myself, I accused her of using me to make her husband jealous. It would have been good to say this aloud. She probably had much to confess. Mainly her disgusting double-dealing and hypocrisy; she was behaving like a sly gentlewoman, like a well-educated young lady. She begrudges me ten minutes, her husband is not enough for her, but she has time to go to church, spend time on theology, even though the slut is living in sin, to use her own words; now, who the hell could understand that. Why did I have to run into such a stupid woman like this again. Of course, this sort of inner conversation leaves one even lonelier, entangling one more deeply in the seaweed of emotions. It was also strange that I had more physical feelings for the unknown man’s neck than for the woman, for this whore, and yet I still measured everything by the way she might respond to what was happening.

The shining edge of her face showed no response to anything, not to doubts and not to accusations. Her immobile eyelashes, strong nostrils, full lips, and soft chin were like a moonlit mountain range that the outside world could barely touch; and her response remained a sustained indifferent muteness.

Anyway, each time I looked at her it was as if seeing her for the first time. She had many faces. I had to get used to being able to see only one of her faces at a time, and that was not even close to a physical feeling. Not even an attraction, because I had no way of knowing which of her many unknown faces would be waiting for me. Attraction, theoretically, must be based on some sort of certainty. The woman I was seeing here, in the car, was not the woman I had seen behind the steam of the coffee machine in the shop, or the one I’d wrangled with a short while ago on the street. I don’t know how she did it. I was preoccupied with berating her to myself and studying her from close up; and her beauty still made my chest expand, though I had not the vaguest idea what I could possibly learn from such beauty, and even less of an idea why I was so defenseless against it. What kind of nonsense is this, what stupidity. My situation looked hopeless; I couldn’t imagine how I’d get out of it.

Now I could look at her, irresponsibly and carelessly, and smell her to my heart’s content, something I had deeply desired, but I felt I was being locked into this insurmountable, laughable desire of mine. Something you’d want to break out of, but your gratification lies in your inability to break out. Thus, my body truly understood the man, who could not abide this woman, and that is why, against his own decision, he had to abandon his motionlessness. He did not capitulate completely, but he began rummaging in his pocket — a movement that hinted at weakness, vulnerability, and inconsistency. I was no less vulnerable, and I had no reason for it; she completely paralyzed me with her arbitrariness. He put something in the woman’s lap, an object or some secret gift I could not see.

Have you gone crazy, you’ve gone completely mad, the woman cried.

I think so too, responded the man.

Then he had to reach across the woman’s knees to find something in the glove compartment. He probably wanted to light up but found not one lousy cigarette there, and to do something anyway so as not to humiliate himself more, he angrily stopped the windshield wipers.

Well, maybe we should get going then, Simon, said the woman, and she made the mysterious object disappear into her pocket.

The man was frankly admitting his weakness, to which the woman probably always responded with a new cruelty.

What do you mean, maybe we should get going, what is that supposed to mean, tell me.

That we should go instead of keep sitting here.

If you’d be kind enough to close the door, Klára, we could really get going.

You don’t have to tell me twice, Simon.

And since they were still calling each other by their first name, this was obviously a kind of revenge. As if they were saying that no matter what happens, we must not lose patience, and we won’t. Even though they had lost it ages ago; besides, they were the ones who were trying each other’s patience. This must have been a well-practiced game. One of them pretended to have inexhaustible patience, and the sustained deceit made the other one lose patience completely. To make matters worse, the man did not find a cigarette, but the woman nicely vented her anger by slamming the car door shut very hard. Yet nothing happened. The man did not start the car.

Impassive and motionless, they both kept looking straight ahead. Now the woman should have made up some of her losses, or given up, but neither of them could give up anything.

And if I may ask, Klára, he asked very quietly and stopped.

And then at the top of his voice he yelled into the dark, where, you cheerless cunt, would you care to go. I am at your service, awaiting your command. You know your wish is my command.

In response the woman quickly turned around and gave me a quick glance; she obviously hadn’t forgotten me and in this impossible situation wanted to be sure I was still there. I had never heard nor could I imagine a man saying such a thing to a woman. And I’d never come across things like this even in movies or novels. Actually, the woman was not preoccupied with me, though with her glance she betrayed her regret that I had to witness this scene with no chance to escape, and shamelessly she continued her campaign of gentleness.

I sincerely hope, she said very quietly, that you are not being so charming and amiable because I have offended you in some way.

On the contrary, replied the man, no less quietly, I am always happy whenever I can reciprocate your attentiveness with something.

You must have acquired your manners in the Battle of Voronezh.*

I’d have readily acquired them at the Sorbonne if I’d known I’d be in the company of such illustrious types.

I enjoy the company of a tippler.

But I can’t abide your social class.

You don’t mean that seriously, do you now.

They looked into each other’s eyes and I can’t say they didn’t enjoy it a bit. Two obstinate foreheads, two fighting profiles, two magnificent manes of hair, two individual self-hatreds; even I enjoyed seeing their wildness.

Then would you mind telling me, my darling, what happened, what’s wrong, my one and only love, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, repeated the woman with increasing rudeness, ever more harshly and loudly, as if she had truly had enough, as if she’d go mad if she couldn’t redeem herself with hysteria.

Yet she quickly managed to reverse her ominous tone. I really didn’t mean to make fun of you, she then said very quietly. I’d like you to calm down a little. That’s all I want.

You haven’t answered my question.

I did close the door properly, though, didn’t I.

Most laudable.

I am one hell of a girl.

And you really think that everything’s all right now, don’t you.

I don’t know what else I could do to further our progress, the woman replied with a raw grin.

That I’ll forget it, that’s what you hope — that I’ll forget and forgive everything.

You’ve nothing to forget, my darling, my one and only, and you’ve nothing to forgive.

They looked at each other for a long time, as if they were playing on some peculiar instrument: two human heads bewitched by each other, two proud human heads. What emanated and radiated from the posture of their heads was that no matter what they might do for or against each other, they’d never run out of artistic ideas. Now it was the man’s turn to give in first, because her raw grin seemed to have stuck to him, no matter how hard he tried to defend himself against it by struggling for quite a time to put on a serious expression. Laughter probably helped the man accept his new defeat. Like two mischievous children at the successful completion of a prank, they burst simultaneously into brief, quiet laughter. Laughing must have helped the man through this latest defeat. It was painful to hear the two merry voices together. It was as though they were saying, we did this really well, but our shared success means that striving for happiness is more important than truth or justice. And then it was the man again who lost, with his search for truth, and the woman who won, with her search for happiness. Their attraction was much too strong; I could not resist it. I felt the man’s defeat in my cock stuck in my underpants, shriveled with fear yet moist with desire. And the woman gently leaned toward the man and was about to kiss him on the mouth, right in front of my nose. I had no idea what to do on that very hard backseat designed for luggage.

She barely touched him and quickly recoiled, alarmed; I could see the genuine shock on her face.

You’ve had a drink, she cried out desperately, like a child, which meant the man had broken his promise again.

I had one vodka, true. I couldn’t help it.

I can feel that you had more than one.

Even to please you, I can’t admit to more than one.

In that case, please be kind enough to take me home.

And I should go by myself.

By yourself or with anybody. Wherever you want to, however you want to.

After the latest squabble, their silence turned hopelessly dark and ominous. A moment ago, despite all my humiliation and resistance, they had captured my curiosity, but this skirmish unsettled me. For what they were doing to each other now needed no witnesses; my observing them was no longer explainable or endurable. This did not occur to me as a moral question; it simply hit me in my stomach, in my guts. One never knows what sort of life to wish for, because one would have to wish for several different kinds at once, to weigh the possibilities, but surely one wouldn’t wish for this kind. I worried that in my fright I’d have to fart.

I felt the moment had come; I couldn’t keep the results of my prolonged anxiety in check.

I began to speak, quietly and cautiously, calling the woman by her first name for the first time, and to emphasize what I was about to say I leaned closer to her and with both hands grasped the back of her seat near her shoulders. I took great care not to let my fingers touch her coat.

The man eyed me hostilely in the rearview mirror.

I think my presence is really unnecessary, I said, and told her that with her permission I’d like to get out.

As if she had waited for my voice, she turned around — but not just with her head, with her entire torso — and her shoulder pressed my fingers into the upholstery. And I was just going to turn to the man to take my leave. If the situation turned out like this, there was no reason to reverse it or pretend it wasn’t the way it was. But with her shoulders and her back, the woman bound me to herself, I became bound to her, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to free myself from her. This was nothing more or less than what happens when one fits the right plug in the right outlet and the current flows and the bulb lights up. She had to feel how excited and tense my body was. Through her coat, I sensed there was no reason to be nervous, because her calm or security would not be upset even by momentary despair. And for the next decade I would light up, would emit light, only for her. That’s it, the matter was taken care of. An enormous keel of confidence, tranquillity, and security steadied her, and other kinds of emotion or feeling could only scratch its surface, they could not disturb it.

The darkness we sat in glimmered, because light from the streetlamp outside was diffused by slowly accumulating drops of a fine rain that rolled quickly downward on the windows; the dark depths of the car were pervaded by the smell of stale tobacco, wet hair, coats, animal hide, and perfume, and now I could detect the reek of booze.

The man’s black hair emanated its fragrance differently from that of the woman’s blond mane.

For me, at that moment, everything had an elemental force, a perspective, height, depth, light, shadow, and of course an impalpable dark side. Be it a sight or a feeling, elemental forces were pitted against one another and, so that they would not be noticed in their naked forms, the words said one thing and the gestures said something else. Otherwise, they’d have knocked me out or carried me away completely. Although everything was interlaced with helplessness — the dominant feelings of the times, saturating and pervading everything, were total hopelessness, fear, disappointment, regret, exasperation, apathy, and tension — this state of affairs inevitably clashed with the confidence that comes from being alive; one’s own breathing offered assurance and hope for the next few moments and also, and above all, energy to endure many things or at least to throw a bridge over them. Even while making that remark about intending to leave, I knew I could never extricate myself from this affair. But I’d known that before, known it well in advance. She could see me better now, and I was afraid that her husband could too, though I hadn’t the vaguest idea with what and how I had revealed my shock. At any rate, the light of the streetlamp fell on my face and left theirs in the dark, but there were two unmistakable flashes in the woman’s eyes with which she meant to reassure me. As if with one flash she was saying, the problem is pretty big but this time I can handle him, and with the other, referring to my hysterical fear, she was peremptorily blocking my desire to escape: stay, help me.

Yet this was not what she said aloud, or rather, she arranged her words according to the rules of propriety.

She said, go ahead, go, she saw no problem, and while I hadn’t recovered because I was still trying to understand how I could be of help to her, she reached over for the door handle, the door was already open a little, ready to step out and fold down the front seat and let me out.

I still wonder what would have happened if the scene had ended there.

If it had, I’d probably never have gone back to the store and my life would have turned out very differently. My hysterical fear would have overcome me and I’d have met something entirely different. I would surely have met somebody on Margit Island who would not have been a woman. But I’ve no way of knowing that. Maybe I’d have found the wonderful giant again, whom I could never forget anyway. But the scene could not end that way: the man started the car — it all happened so fast — and in an instant the old motor moaned and bellowed, all revved up, and Klára managed to yank the door shut.

Puddles spurted under us, the wet roadway sizzled, on the empty road we barreled into the darkness at an insane speed.

And from then on none of us spoke.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it; if he wants to drive while he’s drunk, let him. I threw myself back on the stiff leather seat meant for luggage and did not give a damn. Wheels screeching, we turned sharply from Nagymező Street into Andrássy Street. Maybe this man is not only drunk but also crazy; in a little while, I caught myself enjoying his craziness. I caught myself not only holding on but also letting my fingers go exploring, patting, and stroking, and these movements were involuntary and revealing. As if I were taking possession of something that belonged to them. I wanted some hide, some skin, while thinking again about the giant. I am touching and feeling this finely made black leather seat, stroking the decorative, richly grained, brown stripes of nacreous luster that, at the height of the backrests, tauten the vertically cushioned, ribbed, gray upholstery. As if I were discovering only now that in the interior of this old rattletrap everything was flawless, comfortable, and luxurious. This flawlessness went well with the woman but not with the man. I enjoyed the speed, their obstinate necks, their craziness, my own madness, I enjoyed the streetlights flitting by so regularly, I enjoyed having no idea what would happen to me or what I could do with my unstoppable thoughts. I enjoyed the little freedom I had gained from them, enjoyed having left my usual life so far behind that all questions seemed to reach me from a great distance. I gave myself over to the mad rush — from today’s perspective it probably wasn’t all that fast — which seemed to squeeze my soul.

He must have seen from far off that in front of the Savoy Café, around an open assault vehicle, policemen were cooling their heels and smoking; still, he didn’t slow down. The Savoy was empty that evening, as was the Abbázia across the street. White tables had been set for guests in the empty light. In fact, the entire dark city, paralyzed by the emergency situation, was empty, though filled with news and rumors; everyone preferred to stay quietly at home. Jostling and rattling, driving parallel to the streetcar tracks at full speed, we crossed the boulevard, decorated with drenched flags. For some reason, the police decided not to pursue us. I didn’t dare look back because I couldn’t imagine what would happen if they decided to chase us. It was a good, warm feeling, dictated by a groundless sense of confidence that even the possibility of a chase would not faze me; let them come after us. But they didn’t. In a few moments the car pleasantly warmed up and the rain-beaten windows became a little hazy. It occurred to me that the police might have thought Simon was one of them because of his leather coat, or that he behaved so fearlessly because he was a police officer. Regular cops did not wear such fine leather coats. The wet bare branches of the plane trees hovered above us in the gusting wind and rushed above us on Andrássy Street, a straight, wide boulevard with two tree-lined promenades that divide the broad roadway into three double-lane strips.

Not a vehicle, not a pedestrian anywhere.

The glimmering cobblestones on the tree-lined street rushed darkly under us. Just before the Körönd rotary I involuntarily yelled, watch out, dog, because a rather large black animal, attracted by the approaching car, was loping toward us from the outer sidewalk. Its surprised master, yelling and gesticulating, was running uselessly after it. The dog galloped at a right angle from him and then was off the sidewalk, across the road, back on the promenade, as if it were planning to hurl himself at us from the flower beds. For some reason it thought better of this, and, with muscles tense and mug thrust forward, it merely barked at the car from among the trees.

But it was not the same dog.

And it did not slow us down. Simon wasn’t driving as if, defying danger or at least taking it into account, he felt free. I’d say, rather, that he was ready for any collision, at whatever cost, and the explanation for his resolve was not to be found in either freedom or servitude. He grasped the wheel tightly, his arm stiffly spread. Nothing had an explanation, really. I certainly had no explanation for why I felt good at last in this anarchy or chaos opening up for me. I was a little embarrassed about my shouting. As if I still had something to lose.

But I preferred that nothing should be the way I’d have wanted it; let everything be the way it happens to be.

Klára’s body did not respond.

True, nobody asked her anything; events as well as the persons participating in them became independent. Ultimately, I gave myself over to the feeling Simon had claimed to himself: I surrendered myself to the mad chase, which covered over all my confused or nice feelings or any other kind of feeling, and which did not even let me know what we were chasing.

Originally, to all indications, he’d planned to drive to Hősök Square, at the end of Andrássy Street.

We’d barely left the infuriated dog behind us when from the Körönd we could see that we might not easily get through what was waiting for us. From afar, it seemed like an inexplicable apparition: somewhere, near or in line with Bajza Street, between the sidewalks lined with gigantic trees, two dark masses were blocking our way; between them lay only a narrow, brilliantly illuminated passage. At first glance, I couldn’t figure out what it was. We could see only a glowing mass of light between two dark masses.

Simon probably saw this first and figured it out before I did. We had already sped through the huge intersection at Körönd. He must have made his decision in a split second; without slackening his stiffened arms, and leaning into the movement with his entire upper body, he yanked the steering wheel to the right and then, amid terrific jolts, creaks, and thuds, gave another yank to the left, which luckily missed running us up onto the promenade and into the trees or flower beds; he managed to find the roadway between the promenade and sidewalk, where he sped through without slowing down at all.

I won’t deny it, I admired him.

And the explanation for the apparition was very simple. To block that part of the road, the police had put two of their assault cars facing each other and turned floodlights on both of them.

It wasn’t easy to understand why they’d done this. Perhaps something else had happened in the city which we hadn’t yet heard about, not just the terrible accident that morning at the site of the official celebration. But none of us asked or said anything. They wanted either to arrest some people or to keep the entire city under control. One left so many things unsaid and stopped doing things at the slightest hint of danger; we kept quiet because we always expected the worst. In the dark, under the trees, the leather-coated fellows stood in groups. They had not erected such a conspicuous roadblock for at least four years. It was also peculiar that they had chosen this street on which to block this quarter of the city. At the corner, behind a heavy wrought-iron fence, stood the Soviet embassy, now darkened; if one strolled farther down these tree-lined streets one could see that all the way to the Epres Gardens every building belonged to the Russians; the area had become a little Moscow. It was not likely that we could get through the cordon even on a secondary road. But Simon was not slowing down; he turned into Bajza Street at a sharp angle, brushing against the curb and honking his horn twice.

The real game was just about to begin, or maybe it wasn’t a game.

Perhaps he wanted to prove something to the woman. Or prove his superiority to me. He was screaming. It would be incorrect to say he was screaming at the top of his lungs, rather I should say he was screaming from the depths of his chest. As if singing a lonely song of self-justification. Now he increased the speed, now just as suddenly reduced it; the car was rocking back and forth. For long spells he’d let go of the wheel or, thrusting his arms against it, would yank it this way and that, making the car dance between the two sidewalks. It was hard to tell what the old jalopy could endure; maybe it was an old Adler. All the while, he honked the horn rhythmically. I couldn’t be sure whether with this weird running amok he was testing his wife, putting on a show for me, or taking his revenge on the cops we’d left standing and befuddled, for having kept him in a constant fear of threats; he was simply thumbing his nose at them.

In those years, one didn’t do things like that.

There were enough other dangers.

Klára cautiously held on to the seat, but her posture revealed no fear or any sign that she had an opinion about what was happening. She retreated, became neutral and did so inconspicuously, which in itself was a weighty opinion. One did not provoke fate if one could help it. With triumphantly sung battle cries and much honking of the horn we drove across Queen Vilma Road, now called Gorky Avenue, and then across Damjanich Street. I thought Simon had indeed gone mad. Might deliberately run into a building. He drove up on the sidewalk. With a terrible racket, we swept away a few garbage cans put out for the morning collection.

Nobody could be sure that some unsuspecting person might not step out on the sidewalk.

I was counting on Klára to figure out a way to restrain him.

But during those few seconds we drove along the sidewalk in Nefelejcs Street, I chose to close my eyes. I had no other way to protect myself against such an enormous attack of senselessness. Perhaps it would have been more dangerous to do something than do nothing. At the corner of Dembinszky Street, we literally fell off the high curb. At least he left off with his screaming, as if he’d bitten his tongue. Then, as if doing the most natural thing in the world, he drove perpendicularly across the street and deliberately braked so sharply that we tumbled forward.

Voilà, c’est tout, he said, here we are, and slapped the wheel with both hands, making the horn screech again.

This is when Klára looked at him again, with yet another profile.

I’ll just change, she said dryly, give me ten minutes.

Five, said the man.

Eight, she said, and before getting out she threw a glance my way.

She wanted to be sure that I’d survived the shock.

For that instant, I could cling to her attention, but this brief encouragement proved inadequate to help me endure the following minutes. She released the car door carefully, it barely clicked shut; with hurrying steps she walked through an open, dark, gaping gate. Leaning across the seat and pushing out the door a little, the man yelled after her to bring some cigarettes. The door clicked closed again, there was silence at last; again an impossible moment. Outside the wind was raging, slamming into the tin gutters. We were out of life-threatening danger. In the rearview mirror he looked at me hostilely, as if he were still preparing something against me or against the world; I looked back at him. It was an unfamiliar look; I couldn’t tell what he might be up to. But I ran out of the reserve of Klára’s encouraging glance. Now I couldn’t have given a good reason for leaving.

It was getting late, but that wouldn’t do for an excuse.

I said, I’d like to stretch a little, but now I wasn’t thinking of anything else except getting away. I wasn’t going to wait for Klára to come back.

Of course, it also occurred to me that I should cut across dark Aréna Road. I seemed to feel in my limbs the elation of getting away, the liberating steps.

As if freedom were truly waiting for me on the other side under the storm-tossed trees.

I still called it Aréna Road, its old name, because there stood the house, facing City Park, where I was born, and which my grandfather had built. And behind the Műcsarnok art gallery, among the large plane trees, the underground public urinal yawned invitingly with its pale light; this was where men thirsty for one another always waited in droves.

He asked me if I had any cigarettes; he said he’d get out and stretch a little too, but he’d gotten very wet before, which made me glad. At least we clarified the distance between us. I said I was sorry but I did not smoke, which was not completely true, and we both got out of the car. For me it was harder because I had to climb around the front seat, tipped forward. And to lessen my humiliation, I said if my memory did not fail me, there was a bar nearby. While waiting for Klára, I’d be happy to buy him some cigarettes there. He burst out laughing as if to brag about his embarrassment. He said that would be very considerate of me, but he could hold out for another few minutes. But I was right about the bar, he said, there, and he motioned toward the farther stretch of the street.

They have pretty lousy cigarettes.

His leather coat was short, I could see now under the streetlamp, its leather rather worn, its surface scaly with time. Private chauffeurs and farm managers had worn coats like that before the war.

The bar was indeed there on the bleak and shabby part of the street. Who knows how long the shadows of men had been standing there with their beers and spritzers in front of its illuminated window. This bar was one of the most mysterious places of my childhood. Regardless of what kind of family one comes from, in the city where one grows up there are always some forbidden places. This was not a hostile world; if the drunks weren’t on a rampage it was a rather peaceful place, yet I knew I should not step inside it. Not because somebody had forbidden it; life simply presented no situation that would have required it. Lately, this was the starting point and terminus of the number 5 bus line. The bar was always dim with smoke; it buzzed like a beehive; there were always so many men that some of them had to stay on the sidewalk, even in winter. They put a bench outside, along the wall of the building. The streetcar on István Road was also discontinued. The bench was painted blue, like the buses, because it was meant for resting drivers and conductors, but most of the time this is where the drunks lay about.

From the dark City Park, the spring breeze with the fragrance of wet trees pounced on us freely.

Then something perplexing happened again, something I hadn’t counted on.

Hans von Wolkenstein

He was but a tiny spot in the landscape, the boy about whom they had spoken in Baron Schuer’s study. The one with blond hair streaked so noticeably with strands of dark brown.

An ant, a hard-shelled little bug, no more than a naked worm that anyone might absently crush underfoot.

A little boy with brilliant blue eyes and close-cropped hair, slightly sluggish movements and a slouchy walk, who had no extreme thoughts or unpleasant feelings about himself. He was not grinning now, but he wasn’t bothered by premonitions. Nothing indicated to him that something might be out of the ordinary in the universe or that any danger was lurking.

Although the other boys could not help worrying about the regular racial-biological measurements, he wasn’t even fazed when one of their mates jumped off the Ochsensprung at dawn and died instantly. He often irritated his counselors with his constant grins. Which the others enjoyed no end: that he had the courage to grin and, when the counselors cautioned him that now you really have nothing to grin about, my boy, that he responded by grinning even more foolishly. Perhaps he found their displeasure comical, perhaps he was glad to receive more than the usual share of attention, for which he was willing to do much, because he liked to playact and clown around. The others thought him daring. They admired and feared him. They wouldn’t have dared behave as he did or approve of behavior like his.

The counselors assumed that since the other boys laughed at him, the community’s severe judgment would affect him.

But that was not the case; on the contrary, the boys laughed in sheer enjoyment. Involuntarily and communally, the boys were also laughing at something they shouldn’t have laughed at. Progressing carefully, step by careful step, Hans led them to unruliness; he was unruly on their behalf, which gave him enormous pleasure, always to go further than the others would ever dare and thus to lead them to sedition. The counselors failed to notice that the laughter was a shared and organized display of insubordination, a veritable rebellion. Or rather, they noticed it only when it was too late. They should have recorded every occurrence in all its aspects and manifested forms.

From a genetic viewpoint, they regarded a proclivity to rebellion as an important telltale sign.

The baroness also thought it outrageous that a person should be grinning all the time, unable to look at anyone without grinning.

Hans, you are behaving preposterously, my boy, your behavior is simply impossible, that is how she chided him.

But her son listened to her less than to anyone else.

Every year several boys tried to throw away their lives; only the childish methods or the results differed. But Hans took nothing seriously — the baroness had reason to worry about him, for it didn’t matter what she told him; he did not care about her motherly pain and sorrow, did not listen to her chiding or warning; she might as well have talked to the wall.

He’d follow her with his wide-open, slightly wondering, incredulous eyes as if out of curiosity, so as to fix in his conscious mind her every gesture; emotionally he remained far removed from everything. In this the baroness recognized herself in him, and when that happened she fell silent, contented. Even though it was the boy’s father who looked back at her with those rebellious, challenging eyes. It was as if, relinquishing their ritual sentimentality, the three of them had suddenly become closer. And none of them could deny their shameless intimacy.

This was Hans’s fourth year in the boarding school. Had they not opened this school, his mother would have had a problem finding a place for him. Several times during those years, he had lived through a peculiar hour or day, such as today, but unlike the other boys he found nothing to object to in the leap to death, not even the first time. At most its finality surprised him rather benignly. Those boys had saved their integrity, which everyone else loses several times an hour until they’ve used up their last reserves. He appreciated the suicide boys’ perspicacity, their consistency. In the depths of his soul he approved of them, considered them superior to those, including himself, who were willing to endure their lives simply to stay alive. He put a good face on his life, since he didn’t want to make his own or anyone else’s life more difficult by whining or complaining; he became fate’s disgraced conspirator, and with his entire physical being he suffered from existence.

He constantly felt that the raw materials of his body, his organs and limbs, had been put into the wrong skin, and the soul that was added was inappropriate to such a skin or such flesh. He profoundly disdained those who spent their lives eagerly fulfilling their filial duties and paying naïve respect to their parents. No matter what. Anyone can deceive people like that and make them do anything. In his eyes, those boys were laughable creatures. Still, in his disdain he failed to overcome his deeply rooted religious presentiment that perhaps the devil had tempted the boys when they threw themselves into the depths.

And now another school year was over. During the short summer vacation he had to stay here, could not go to Berlin. And, because of her work, the baroness could not come to Annaberg.

While roaming about alone during these three weeks in the enormous Erzgebirge landscape, he thought a lot about these matters. But even in retrospect it did not occur to him to be horrified, as others were, by the suicides. At most he found it ridiculous that some of the boys miscalculated the direction of their jumps or changed their minds at the last minute and were caught on the first rock and were injured but did not die. Or those whose plans were faulty to begin with. They were ready to throw themselves onto the tracks of the narrow-gauge railway, the idiots, when they knew the train had to slow down before the viaduct and would only cut off an arm or a leg.

Occasionally the feverish desire to free-fall seemed to spread like an epidemic among the boys. It was safest to jump off the viaduct. As if every school year demanded a living sacrifice to frighten the rest of them and make them forget their own attraction to it. As if the suicides were offering up their mangled bodies to their mates. And to have one successful attempt, several boys had to try it; there were always more of them prepared to do so. Whether as dead or as wounded, the boys who made the attempt were never seen again. There were no funeral services or memorials; the counselors conducted no investigations that might have revealed who had assisted the suicides in their preparations.

Alone and unnoticed, it would have been hard to do anything. Obviously everyone had accomplices, and this kind of friendship was no less a threat to society than a collective rebellion. Baron Schuer himself viewed this infectious inclination with some anxiety, but after consultation with pedagogical and psychological workers from sister institutions he concluded that, statistically speaking, the phenomenon was not extraordinary or worrisome. It was necessary to take certain risks in an experiment of such scope.

They did not reprimand the survivors in terms of religious morality either; instead, things continued as if nothing had happened. For the living survivors who had helped other boys to kill themselves, this lack of reprimand, especially the lack of religious reproof, marked a kind of limit on their own impunity.

A certain stillness, an unnamed shame, filled the empty spaces. Among the boys who missed their self-destructive mates, anyway. Being silent made forgetting harder. One of the priests at St. Anne’s should have commemorated the unusual events — at least from the pulpit in Annaberg, when on Sunday morning the counselors accompanied the boys who showed up for early services. Every Sunday, those counselors turned the simple act of preparing to go to church into an elaborate procedure, using it to see who were the believers, who the dissemblers, who might go just for the fun of it and then during the service end up scandalizing the town with their giggling. Hans showed up for services, but not because in his faith he wanted to follow his mother’s example. Yet the priests, whose relationship with the demonstrably pagan counselors was obviously strained, never mentioned the events in any sermon. It was impossible that they did not know of them, but one couldn’t tell this by looking at them. Hans had the impression that the communal silence resembled the behavior of a free valence in a world of chemical compounds, forever dangling in the empty universe in hope of combining with something.

After all, the the ones who had perished were flawed specimens — this must not be forgotten for even a moment. A pagan thought, and Hans did not understand how the priests could approve it.

He imagined that their departed mates had the free arms of the living boys in their grip.

And when it happened again, the physics teacher, Gruber, would take them the next day to the viaduct to explain again the laws of free fall, sometimes several times over. He did this each time a suicide occurred, using the very same expressions on each occasion, yet the boys never tired of his lectures. Whether the act had been successful or not, the poor fool had come to grief forever, Gruber explained as if for the first time. One group of boys was made to stay at the bottom of the viaduct while another group, led by the good-looking young teacher, clambered up to the railway embankment among the pine trees, and from there to the viaduct’s central pier; after they had performed the experiment the groups changed places. The teacher’s opinion was that the boys could understand the dazzling regularity of uniformly accelerating motion and the strictly physical character of human life only if they measured and experienced them from both perspectives. All they needed for the experiment was an authenticated means of measurement, an authenticated lead weight, and two authenticated stopwatches. The measure of uniformly accelerating motion differs only slightly at every geographical location; up to this point, it is easy to understand the premise. At the select location where we live, for example, the contiguous crust of gneiss strongly but uniformly modifies the motion. It is a general rule that the speed of a given body, while falling, changes equally in equal intervals. According to Gruber’s authenticated measurements, in the Wiesenbad gorge the speed was 980,839 centimeters per second. If, therefore, at the dropping of the accurate lead weight, the speed is zero, then in the second second of the fall it will be 980,839 centimeters per second, in the next second 2 x 980,839 centimeters per second, and so on; after t seconds it is t x 980,839 centimeters per second. From here on, only a few could follow the good-looking young teacher’s explanation, according to which, in plain words, speed is proportionate to time and it is therefore easy to figure what sort of resistance the body, falling at the given speed in the given time, will encounter when hitting the ground.

The boys, who did not understand the logic of the calculation and would have liked not to think about the smashed body, about the boy whom they may have loved or sometimes hated, but who still hoped they’d do the measurements rights, at least mechanically right, usually watched the good-looking teacher rummaging with both hands in the pockets of his smock while moving his buttocks in odd ways. Walking back and forth in front of them, what was he looking for and what was he finding. Sometimes he became so involved in the explanation of the physical world that he stopped involuntarily, lifted something from his pocket, and looked at it a long time with innocent eyes, though he probably could not have said why he had taken it out and what it was he was seeing. He had in his pockets pieces of chalk, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, a ball of carefully rolled-up string, and a pendulum; the latter two went together. One could fit the waxed red loop of the string into the hook on the pendulum. Hans, for some inexplicable reason, particularly envied the teacher this clever little instrument. Or, in his absentmindedness, the teacher would reach into the depth of his pocket and at the same time stick his butt out and reach between his legs to scratch. The boys knew perfectly well what he was scratching, and they said he was scratching his balls. They happened to know he suffered from some skin ailment that might have been caused by venereal disease. Occasionally, he’d lift the wings of his smock and, reaching into his pants pocket, rearrange his testicles in a more comfortable position.

He would halt his explanation while his symmetrical face with its handsome little mustache took on a dreamy look.

The crushed bodies were taken not to Chemnitz, nearby, and not even to Dresden, but to distant Leipzig, directly to the university clinic where, after thorough autopsies, the families could receive them in sealed coffins. On this brand-new day, fallen on them from the bright blue sky, their hands messy with fine woodland dirt, the boys were standing in the botanical garden.

One of them, named Kienast, happened to know that the researchers in Leipzig and Berlin were especially interested in the brains of the suicides.

You’re making this up, Kienast, said one of the older boys hesitantly. I’d say you’re talking nonsense.

And they know how to make clean work of it too, continued Kienast, as if he had not heard the older boy. If there’s anything left of the head, they saw around the dome of the cranium and take it off, like the lid of a pot.

They don’t do that differently with others, so what’s so special about it, if you wouldn’t mind telling us.

Listen, I know exactly how they get to the valuable brain.

That’s not what I doubt.

And they have to get to it.

Come on, my little friend, they can’t suck it out with a straw through the ears or the nose.

But I know how, the bookish Kienast kept repeating stubbornly and was hurt when the other boys laughed at him again.

He was from Leipzig and his father was indeed a prosector, employed not by the university clinic but by the municipality. More precisely, he made very ingenious dissecting instruments, and Kienast claimed that this was a family tradition, because the whole family was made up of inventors. He often picked his nose, and the others said that he seemed to have invented nostril mucus. The older boy, known to be Hans von Wolkenstein’s best friend, had great prestige. In the boarding school, the boys conversed in exceedingly polite and bookish tones, but there was much cruelty; in fact, they concealed their brutality and cruel behavior behind politeness and dry argumentation. They would not burden one another with openness. At times they wove their sentences so circuitously and archaically it was as if they wished to hide their longings and desires from one another. Even in their loud skepticism, they never went too far. Now they were laughing mainly because of the tension suddenly provoked by the extraordinary event. The way adolescent boys laugh to stimulate one another to continued laughter. Some of them were gliding between higher and lower registers; others simply neighed. It was hard to imagine that someone who only yesterday had knelt right here to fish mole crickets carefully out of fresh horse dung and throw them into a bucket of water was now lying on a marble table, having become the object of scientific research.

What makes the brain so precious is that you can make vertical or horizontal cross-sections of it. I wish to note that it’s your privilege not to believe this, insisted the one called Kienast, shouting over the laughs.

There was no malice in the boys’ assault of laughter; they treated Kienast’s foolishness, and even his obvious character weaknesses, with indulgent love. He was a shitty little character, but they liked him, and for quite some time he had been under their protection. Whenever he was gripped by an epileptic fit, they literally formed a wall around him, cleverly diverting the counselors’ attention from him. They could not bear letting his secret be discovered; he became the pledge, as it were, of their secret resistance.

They preferred to overlook his shitty little quirks.

Kienast was small, fragile, incredibly mean and aggressive. It had become clear that even epileptics were not removed from the boarding school, because the researchers were just as curious about their behavior patterns as they were about every other deviation, though by law epileptics had to be sterilized. This was no laughing matter, and that is how he had become the silent object of their resistance. He probably tried to balance his threatened state with zeal, while the others did the same with their manliness.

It hurt his pride that his physical misery, whose origin was unknown to him, made him dependent on his mates.

And then they progress cell by cell; in retrospect, they can find out the guy’s personal secrets.

He had a complete story, told with quiet shuddering, about how different people had committed suicide.

It was strictly forbidden to go near the railway that crossed the pine forest unless a counselor went with them, or to the enormous viaduct bridging the Wiesenbad valley or, higher up, the Ochsensprung, a rocky ledge barely protruding from the oaks that clung to a steep slope above the waterfall, from where, according to legend, because of a shepherd’s pact with the devil, the Wolkenstein estate’s entire herd of oxen had sought refuge in the depths.

On paper, the counselors had to note every infringement. However, they mainly obeyed the school regulations by noting down when someone, or more than one, had violated one. Their aim was to gain a realistic picture of the various rebellious tendencies thriving among the boys and of their secret movements. On several occasions, when it was Gruber’s turn to wait for the small group of boys in front of St. Anne’s, he would take them not directly back to the boarding school but first to the municipal baths in Hauer Street, into the steam section and afterward to the beer hall on Johannis Street frequented mainly by miners dressed in their Sunday best; the boys ate there, and the older ones also received big glasses of beer.

Gruber paid; he paid for everything.

And he said that they no longer had any secrets from one another.

Which Hans von Wolkenstein, no matter how hard he thought about it, could not understand. Indeed, theoretically nothing could happen to or among the boys that the counselors would not have known about or would not have recorded in their report notebooks. But he did not understand what kind of secret Gruber could observe on Sundays in a steam bath filled with loud men. Hans was sure that Gruber observed a physical phenomenon that, theoretically, they could observe too.

And that Gruber would bring this observation of his into some relationship with the boys’ religiousness or faith. He did not dare ask anyone what Gruber had in mind. The body of anyone jumping from the Ochsensprung would first be smashed on the waterfall’s enormous ledges, but the water would carry the body farther, pushing and hurling it down to the next rocky ledge.

The data gathered from the counselors had to be put into the pedantically documented system of parallel scientific examinations; all data had to find their proper places; there could be no information that, in relation to the expected research results, was not important or interesting. The pupils themselves readily accepted this principle; they knew better than anyone the generally accepted genetic norms and rules. They knew that none of them had a flawless Nordic origin, least of all Kienast. After all, this was the reason they had been brought together here, this is why they’d been picked. Gruber’s origin was different, however; he proudly told them that all his measurements were pure Nordic. Which they watched with great interest and suspicion. Being near him, they felt their own sense of inferiority strongly. The number of peculiarities about him was too many as it was.

They distrusted him, if only because he still lived with his mother, who served them delicious streusel cake when she hosted them.

They had to be here for the experiments; they could conclude that from Gruber’s remarks, but they never talked about this with anyone, never about anything like this.

But why were they, and not their siblings, who were also thoroughly examined in outside clinics, at the school. They asked each other about their origins and defects; it would have made no sense to keep them secret. There were no Jews among them. At least they had no knowledge of any. Secretly they had to know everything, so they could have a better picture of their own situation. Or what about their parents, who had turned them over and exposed them to this continual examination when they themselves were the cause of their children’s dubious status. There is a kind of sexual or amorous heedlessness in the world that cannot be corrected. Kienast’s mother was Mexican, Christian but not Aryan. Something one could not see with the naked eye in her son, but the family was aware of it; they knew it would show up in her son or grandson, and the latent biological conformity filled them with a peculiar dread. If only because of Kienast’s truly spectacular epileptic fits. However, Kienast found it hard to imagine what would have happened if he’d been born not to a mestizo woman but to an Aryan one, whether it would have been better for him. Shackled by a certain physical hypochondria, the boys observed themselves and one another as if expecting some secret ailment to appear at any moment, or some racial impurity whose carrier they had become because of their parents’ mating.

He loved his mother; how could he not, even though it would have been better to hate her since he could not forgive her his birth.

And that she had let these people take him from her.

Or if at least she had chosen another mestizo for her partner and not his father, or stayed in Veracruz so her son would not have been born here, as an epileptic.

And now he had to be ashamed of his mere existence.

And why do their parents pretend that this is a high-class boarding school for boys, as if they knew nothing else about the place.

About what is happening here.

And as if they, the boys, had only to discharge their filial duties. To satisfy their parents by doing well in their studies in all circumstances and by demonstrating exemplary behavior. Everyone knows that parents want to give their children the best of everything.

Children have to be grateful to their parents all their lives.

However, despite its well-kept appearance and exceptional status, there was something ominous and grave about this boarding school.

Hans was glad that at least his father had finally disappeared from his life; at least he wouldn’t be around putting on airs. Sometimes he felt that in this harmlessly desolate landscape and in the rustically styled, bare-walled building there was too much yellow-brown, as if the earth itself had made the building’s substance so heavy; he was disgusted by all the gneiss surfaces glittering with mica. And the surroundings, or his family history, depressed him because here everything was damp, skin-colored, smelling of cold stone. Sometimes his conscience would be gloomy for weeks. He did not understand why he had to be born here or why he was born at all. The rocks, the retaining walls, the northern and western sides of the building wept all day long. At other times, under the influence of other glances, mainly from the eyes of strangers, this was a wonderful, idyllic landscape far from human settlements, a cozy human nest, an old hunting lodge in the primeval forest where everything was well cared for and lived in sensible harmony with nature and with its own nature.

He would marry a blond, blue-eyed, pure Nordic woman and thus he might correct to some extent what his mother had ruined with her careless step.

The others could not have known his family history. It was not clear where he had learned the story himself. The enormous soul-lifting mountain valley, as strangers enthusiastically called it, seemed to hover in a haze even in daytime; it was their family estate. He rarely managed to learn anything about his own history from his mother, but their old servants didn’t give a damn about the laws of inheritance and told him all sorts of things. The haze never left the valley. Outlines dissolved or disappeared completely in the morning or evening fog. One could not tell whether one was seeing mountain peaks or clouds above Frauenholz. At such times everything dripped, as if the plants or objects were weeping. Drops dripped from the leaves, remained poised on the tips of pine needles.

Slowly, quietly, the gutters began to go pit-a-pat and then, as if it were raining, the increasing drops trickled from the wide, high-built roofs and gurgled ever louder.

Scientifically based, vitamin-rich foods awaited the boys; smooth, unadorned raw furniture made of fine German oak and beech, all the furnishings and objects arranged with thrifty good taste; accommodating and friendly service personnel, and a warm pedagogical, educational staff radiating tranquillity, almost a friendly spirit. Teachers of special subjects were brought from Annaberg every morning on a special bus. The boys could choose from various private lessons or play different sports under these teachers’ supervision. They climbed rocks, boxed and wrestled, while others studied musical instruments or various living languages. Or simply sat at the brownish-red kidskin-covered tables in the ground-floor library. On the pretext of checking data for their papers, they sat under the light of the green-shaded lamps and secretly searched in handbooks and encyclopedias for the symptoms of genetic diseases from which they might be suffering.

For some unfathomable reason, up here in the mountains botany became the most widespread passion among the boys. Spores, pistils, pollination, cross-fertilization; the rarely used terms themselves made a strong impression on them, along with dissemination, grafting, rooting, cutting and grafting of buds, the hotbed in the educational orchards, the sowing, dibbling, planting and transplanting in the cold bed, the phrase cold bed itself, the tree nursery, the winter and spring cuttings, the care of the saplings’ nursery, preparation of flower beds, planting on ridges and on hillsides. All these activities were attractive, extremely simple, and time-consuming, sometimes demanding protracted physical effort, at other times deep absorption and concentration. The activities deepened the boys’ patience and confidence regarding nature’s great processes, somehow supplanting religion, because it was from these activities that they had to project their vision not only to the following week but also to the following year or even to the lives of succeeding generations.

Even if they were dealing with annuals.

After a while they became so well versed in the life conditions of plants that at the mere sight of a given sample of a species they could review its entire growth season or even its entire life cycle.

These moments were rewarding because of the weight of their knowledge. Still, their most permanent feeling was one of anxiety and ominous premonition. It sat at the base of their soul like a keel. As if hiding from their own probing looks, they were trying to discover how to satisfy the racial requirements that the accidents of their birth had kept them from fulfilling. And lo, they had barely returned from vacation — not all of them yet, adrift — and already one of them had put an end to it all.

Schultze, one of their teachers, a world-famous expert on racial-biological measurements and measurement techniques, a very proper older gentleman with fuzzy silver-gray hair and cheeks made rosy by burst capillaries, had also come back to the school. A not easily approachable but very musical man, he mainly hummed and whistled to himself. Every month he spent a week, sometimes two, in his separate little room in the attic loft, full of instruments and implements that could be seen nowhere else.

He ordered boys by name up to his office and he himself came downstairs only at mealtimes.

Sometimes his word would tip the final judgment about a boy, but nobody, absolutely nobody, talked about this, not with the other boys and not with any outsider.

They had to go up to him at impossible times.

That is what the instructions were: they had to go to him whenever he called and no matter what activity they were engaged in at the time. There was nothing in the attic but two offices, convalescence rooms, storage rooms, and spaces for various discarded objects, kept in meticulous order behind locked doors and accessible only to the housekeeper.

And to the unusual silence, which surprised everyone and immediately held them captive.

Up here, one could hear, at most, voices or echoes of shouts from the other side of the brook, from the great meadow, or from the sports fields, squeezed in between high retaining walls and glistening with snail trails. Or Schultze’s singing behind closed doors; he often talked to himself in recitative, as if he were performing in an unknown large-cast opera.

The boys would listen to the creaks of the floor or crossbeams while waiting in front of Schultze’s office.

During the examination, Schultze kept his eye on the limb he’d chosen and his ice-cold instruments; nothing else interested him. Occasionally he’d jot something down but hardly ever said anything, preferring to point, indicating that a boy should turn this way or stand over there. Never looked anyone straight in the eye, probably wasn’t curious about the boys. The instruments clinked and clanged. If he especially liked something or was dissatisfied with a result, he would click his tongue.

Let us now look at this marvelous distance, O Tibiale, wherefore hast thou receded so from Stylion.

These were not Greek gods but measuring points on the human body.

Or he would sing something like, O Symphyse, tremble not while from on high Omphalion keeps an eye on thee. These musical mutterings meant that the knee joint on a standing person with arms at his side was farther than usual from the wrist joint, or that the skin over the pubic bone should not tremble nervously, since he was doing nothing to it except, with his instrument designed for this sort of measurement, marking its distance from the navel. Not everyone feared him. The instruments were always cold, so even the bravest boys dreaded that first touch. In ordinary Latin dictionaries, the boys did not find the names Schultze used. They also worried that Schultze might touch their naked limbs and other exposed parts. Two life-size drawings of the human skeleton hung on the wall, with the measuring points of the body marked with numbers. One drawing, of the body in profile, had twenty-seven points; the other, a frontal view, showed twenty-eight points, all according to Braus. This mysterious name was written above both drawings in beautiful Gothic letters, but Braus could not be found in any of the encyclopedias.

Schultze looked at the boys’ eyes while he took out the large leather case in which he kept instruments for assessing eye color. But the leather case so alarmed most of them — the imminent danger making their eyes ache in their sockets — that they quickly closed their eyes or buried their faces in their hands.

In four black-velvet-lined cannonlike cases, glass eyes looked up at the ceiling. They were arranged in five rows, eight to a row, in trays that one could lift out of the cabinet. This meant that there were 160 differently colored and differently patterned glass eyeballs; under each eyeball, on a tiny copper plate sunk into the black velvet, the eye color’s number and letter designation was indicated. Schultze unpacked all this, bringing out all the velvet-framed cases and laying them side by side, the better to see his entire holding. At the bottom of the cabinet, on the last removable tray, there lay on the velvet bed a frightening instrument made of silver and resembling candy tongs, and a strong-smelling, hair-thin sandalwood fan.

Schultze made his first determination with the help of the fan. Individual segments of the fan could be cleverly separated from the others and, along with small enamel panels that showed hand-painted images of the many different eyes, be held up to a living eye in order to identify its color correctly. Although he worked with a steady hand, in his professional excitement Schultze sometimes touched a real eyeball with these small panels lifted to the boys’ temples.

Which of course was enough to make the boys wince.

But Schultze would go on singing, don’t be so sensitive, you little fool.

After this crude definition, he would reach for his ominous silver tongs, with which he could not only lift a valuable glass eyeball adroitly from its velvet bed but hold it with total confidence right next to a real eye. Throughout this activity, he shone strong lights into the boys’ eyes from the front and sides. And he preceded everything by dripping something into their eyes to keep them from blinking. If they resisted or blinked involuntarily, Schultze sang out that intrigue and scheming would not destroy the divine design, the gods cannot be tripped up, and the boys would get more drops in their eyes.

For hours after the examination, the boys would wander about with numb eyelids and enlarged pupils or just sit motionless on a bench, heads buried in their hands.

The light hurt.

Or Schultze would sing, hark, hark, I need but a single secundum, lend me thy patience, Prince, I am on the trail.

For the capital offense, the villain will pay forthwith.

Sometimes the boys would keep rubbing their eyes to gain time.

Don’t pick at it, don’t rub it, unless you want me to take it out with my tongs, my boy. What the devil, so it’s tearing, sang Schultze, and then they had to open their eyes obediently to receive the initial drop or the stabilizing drop or the drop against tearing.

It was very quiet on this floor for another reason: right underneath, on the third floor, were the dormitories, two large and three smaller sleeping halls that during the day were off limits to everyone. All their windows had to be kept open regardless of the season. Even in the vaporous winter cold the halls were barely heated but, because of the high humidity, sometimes in the summer months they tried to moderate the temperature in the rather musty dormitories.

On the second floor were classrooms and the so-called great hall with its two enormous stone fireplaces, thick chimneys, and a chandelier made of painted wood. One could still see, on the gilded rims of the small colorful plates at the base of the electric candles, remnants of guttering wax candles of former days. This large space with its coffered ceiling, painted with great artistry, had once been called the knights’ hall because of two full sets of knight’s armor standing at either side of the entrance. Everything here seemed to have been left where the Thum zu Wolkensteins, who had used them for centuries, abandoned them in somewhat poetic disarray, at which point the baroness turned over the building and the part of the estate that went with it for the protracted use of the institute.

She did it mainly for political and scientific considerations.

True, she received a rather high annual rent from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, but from the point of view of her career, it was more important that she have a safe place for her son. The part of the estate that officially belonged with the building included the broad valley with its fields in flower from spring to autumn; the watercourse, which at certain sections had been regulated; the loud waterfall and the woodlands of the gorges; and the pine and oak forests all the way up to the ridge from the Ochsensprung to Frauenholz, where only clouds roamed. Over the ridge, the baroness’s ancient estate continued in other forests, pastures, and fields, but in the land registry, this entire section was entered under an independent lot number. Baron Schuer now wanted to obtain ownership of the building for his institute, even if it had to be without the rights to the part of the estate that went along with it.

But he did not talk about this at his first move.

He was afraid that if he failed to take advantage of his situation with proper force and speed, Himmler’s ruthless protégé Wolfram Sievers would beat him to it — he might already have done so — and obtain the house for his own institute for research into Germany’s ancestral heritage, his own efforts on behalf of racial purification.* Several years of Schuer’s preparatory work would come to nothing; his was a scientific plan whose execution required at least another decade of research, if not two. He wanted also to somehow call the Führer’s attention to the fact that it was not propitious to have everything doubled in the Reich, and not only because of its costliness.

After all, two scientific truths could not exist side by side.

In this game of higher stakes, he was forced to enter a great trial of strength, which also promised to be a showdown with the powerful Himmler. Who, at least on the face of it, respected his scientific prestige and achievements. Baron Schuer knew from his own assistant, Mengele, that Sievers had had his eyes on the Wolkenstein house for a good many years and had spoken several times with the baroness about purchasing it. Schuer was no more convinced of Mengele’s loyalty than he was of his scientific abilities, but he needed Mengele now. He was afraid that Sievers would take over the house and simply throw out the research material so diligently collected from the children, who had grown used to continued investigation. The baroness herself was also a source of concern: not only did she want to head the institute in Rome in return for the house, but she also meant to raise the rent on it. For his progeny purification institute Sievers looked for houses that were far from any kind of human settlement. He was a long way from having established his network, but dark folk imagination had already given a name to these institutes. Lebensborn: the word itself contributed to the institute’s dubious reputation. A place where life is created. And the baroness intended to raise the rent by the very amount that, with the budget at his disposal, Baron Schuer could not afford to pay.

Which clearly showed that the baroness realized her advantageous business position and wanted to extort as much as she could from him.

Which Mengele must also know, since nothing happened without Himmler’s and Sievers’s approval.

He had turned a haunted, musty hunting lodge into a well-functioning institute with the highest standards of hygiene, and now these people were trying to push him out and settle into a well-established place.

Mindful of the many valuable objects, some of them dating back to the Middle Ages, the old family pictures, the somewhat worn furniture that had reached a critical age, the many fragile historical fripperies, the so-called ornamental pieces, and the heavy hand-woven silk Venetian tapestry, students were not allowed in the knights’ hall except on Christmas Eve. Christmas celebrations were held in the large dining hall on the main floor, which had two stoves built of ancient tiles and walls decorated with trophies. At the completion of the festive meal, music-loving pupils were allowed to enter the knights’ hall and listen to a few recordings of classical music.

Schultze came from Leipzig too. When one boy left his office, a good half hour, sometimes even forty minutes would go by before he would order up the next one. Nobody knew what he did in the interim — how he evaluated the results, and whether the results had anything to do with whom he called for next.

Whether he had a list.

Hans, together with Hendrik Franke, the oldest of the boys, somewhat overage, whom everybody admired for his calm, deliberate manners and who, right now, was arguing with Kienast in the botanical garden, had managed to sneak into Schultze’s office several times. They wanted answers to their worrisome questions; they searched the place thoroughly, took some documents, even destroyed them, but found no list. Schultze always arrived with a large bag; he must have kept his important papers in it.

Which meant they had to get to the bag; and they were determined to do just that. It wasn’t impossible, since Schultze often sat in the second-floor hall and listened to music. He would sing to himself endlessly, even when entering his latest results into his carefully prepared tables, comparing them to earlier results about the same person and to other persons’ results at different times and different places. With a practiced eye, he would check or modify the hypotheses emerging from his research. He would draw up charts of the rhythm of bodily development; he’d compare them but had only a passing interest in them.

No definitive conclusion now was allowed to influence his pending conclusions later.

Well then, let it be him, he sang and ruminated, let it be this one or that one, as he went on with his seemingly mechanical work — based on his familiarity with the physical attributes of boys and on strictly physical measurements — work that in essence, however, proved to be intuitive. The boys could not even begin to deduce what guided Schultze’s decisions or what consequences his maniacal series of measurements might have for them. Because not everybody had a turn on each occasion, and — perhaps because of Schultze’s scientific whims — several boys were left out of the measuring sessions for quite some time. There were his favorites, boys he may have enjoyed measuring, and there were others to whom he paid no attention at all. Or on whom he did the work perfunctorily. Sometimes the boys in the latter group became very anxious that they meant nothing to Schultze anymore. This feeling was unendurable in the long term; it was very like jealousy. While the other boys were watching, enviously or disdainfully. They could not fathom the reason for their exclusion. Why was Schultze not interested in their measurements. In what way did they differ from the others; was it something the naked eye could not see or was it covered by their clothing.

And this watchfulness, intensified by base emotions, made the atmosphere among them ominous and depressive; they could not forgive one another for it.

If there is equality, then let there be equality.

And from a higher viewpoint on the persons or limbs or other body parts chosen to be measured, there were still issues that could be neither followed nor understood. The more and more detailed the data, the more clearly Schultze saw that strength, or energy, or the principle of love or that of equality did not function in organic nature, and that, with regards to judging single individuals, uniformly applied and authenticated units of measurement had been misleading him. Only the exceptional exists; the individual has its laws, very intimate and from the outside impenetrable laws; but the individual is not linked to the group through its exceptional characteristics.

Strength, energy, love, and equality are ultimately kinds of political fiction based on a statistical fiction about the average, and they have nothing to do with physics or biology.

As if he were saying to himself that these sciences must first be cleansed of political fictions, or that he must first occupy himself with metaphysical questions, and only then could he do something with the results of the mechanical measurements.

Maybe not even then.

In the evenings, Schultze sat singing to himself in one of the comfortable armchairs in the great hall. He remained alone with his thoughts even as, around him, other teachers were reading or talking among themselves. He agonized about the desirable metaphysical foundation for the so-called final questions. He did not even notice when a record ended and kept spinning on the turntable, empty and crepitating under the needle. He also managed to talk himself out of looking for connections, relationships, or parallels in his intuitively collected mass of data.

He whistled classical melodies, always repeating them, the same way and always the same ones, maniacally.

At the same time, he drank quite a bit of red wine.

Every time he finished his work, he had to wait for Geipel, another teacher, from Berlin, a renowned expert on the genetic determinations of the palm and fingers, who did not always come alone but in the company of several guests, all of them scientists. Geipel was the scientific supervisor of the examinations, and because of his humorous ways, the boys had very quickly, not as with Schultze, come to like him.

They could more easily understand the rhythm and sense of this embarrassing, oppressive activity called supervision than the meaning of Schultze’s perpetual examinations. The supervisions were carried out at least three times a year. That is when they found out who among them were considered very interesting or problematical — which, theoretically, they should have known earlier, since they involuntarily followed the measuring technique’s secret instructions and made them their own with their own eyes, except that they could never decide why and from what viewpoint this or that fact would be decisive or interesting. Once Schultze had measured something, they observed that thing on themselves and on one another, so together they probably reached a more profound level of observation than Schultze ever did with his exact measurements. They knew everyone’s measurements in any part of his body, what any of them preferred to keep quiet about and, to avoid comparisons, what they wanted to keep a secret and from whom.

Vigilantly they watched one another’s features, limbs, and colors, the changes in their attributes and physical inclinations.

The fruit of this vigilance ripened during the times of supervision.

Schultze’s monkish strictness repelled and disgusted them.

Didn’t I tell you, I also saw it, see, I knew it in advance.

However, they enjoyed the subtle knowledge they gained by studying individual cases.

Involuntarily they became attuned to the scientific presuppositions Schultze studied so diligently, but since they did not need to strive for a scientific outcome, they were free to associate their observations with feelings and emotions. This was not without danger, because they could not ascertain the consequences of their individuality, of their exceptional or problematic qualities, though that might be the fount of their knowledge. That everything had grave, even dire consequences — of that they had no doubt. Nor could they discover whether there were prescribed units of measurement by which to gauge their being problematical. Hendrik and Hans found no papers relating to this question when on two consecutive nights they broke into Schultze’s office. Sometimes it seemed that the committee found the exceptional to be the norm; at other times the norm seemed to mean average or desirable, which again should have been designated by a number or series of numbers, which the boys could not find anywhere.

They also understood that a questionable number was nonetheless a number, its symbol x, just as in the periodic table there are empty spaces. But the empty spaces become visible with the filled places; thus it was not unreasonable to look for the latter. Boys considered problematical were not only exposed to merciless repetitions of previously assessed measurements but, in the silent presence of committee members, also subjected to measurements other boys were not. In any case, the boys had to strip naked for the measurements when Schultze measured the distance between chin, Gnathion, and the tip of the sternum, Suprasternale, and again for the supervisions.

If anyone thought of not stripping voluntarily, Schultze would demand it, on every occasion.

Kienast was considered a difficult case.

Let’s take off those shitty little drawers, Schultze sang, come on, get rid of those stinking socks.

The boys in the boarding school changed underwear once a week, and Schultze was particularly sensitive to the inevitable bodily emissions. He could barely forgive the boys when their bodily data were linked to organ functions. Another reason that made it hard to judge one’s own situation by the measurements of others was that not everyone liked to report on what happened to them in Schultze’s office, what irregularity was discovered or which body part was the focus of interest during a certain visit. Many of them tried to make their reports innocuous, which stood to reason, while others exaggerated theirs shamelessly. Even though no one knew what would result from either of these distortions, and it was impossible to gauge which was the better self-defense in the secret war against being scientific.

To keep quiet about the embarrassing experience of being measured, or to brag, exaggerate, and outdo the others.

They were all bastards, that was the truth.

The adults would never have said this aloud about them, and the boys were even less likely to mention it among themselves. They could not help thinking about it, because not only science but also the law declared them bastards. Nevertheless, the education these misbegotten children were given was in accordance with the most progressive, modern pedagogical theories. Most of the boys considered this an illusion intended to deceive them — a correct assumption — but they could not ignore the scientific level or quality of their education.

Fifty-nine boys, the number hardly changed over the years because the suicides were always replaced with others. They studied in small groups, and these groups were divided roughly by age. Mainly they studied classical sciences, mathematics, physics, botany, chemistry, but also ancient languages, Latin and Greek, literature and history, especially ancient history, and subjects such as archaeology and ethnology that were not usually in the curriculum of midrange schools. Their physical achievements and mental capacities were monitored, and they were given the results of this monitoring because they were asked to do achievement-increasing exercises for the proper assessment of which it was required that they strengthen the spirit of competition among them. Their mental capacity and their intelligence were tested, and copious notes were taken of their behavior in many different circumstances.

The boys could not imagine their instructors without their notebooks. They had to feel privileged to be living and studying in such an environment, and they knew that the highest levels of German science would use the data resulting from this. But they were repeatedly told that they were the same kind of person, birds of a feather, all in the same boat, tied by a bond that could never be broken. Whatever might happen, they could not — and they knew this — not even at the cost of their lives could they leave before high-school graduation. This was so far in the future for them that they couldn’t imagine a world with different conditions.

They could not decide what they should be like, since they were already the way they were.

Or how they should behave, so that despite their unfortunate birth, they might seem to be what in all probability they never had been and never could be. Yet in this way, given who they were, it filled them with satisfaction to think they performed a great service to German science. If Schultze were to succeed one day in defining the norms of racial desirability, based on the boys’ data, their stunted racial development would become their merit.

These mainly intellectual broodings touched Hans less than they did the other boys, and they touched Hendrik only for practical reasons. About as much as did the others’ silently endured pain and self-doubts. Tension and anxiety about a lack or an injury that none of them could avoid. But regardless of the effect of these thoughts on them, Hans and Hendrik, for different reasons and in different ways, were able to keep a distance from them, and even physical intimacy could not have brought them closer than this shared ability.

To their great good luck, they also managed to keep the strong physical signs of this feeling at a certain distance. They could not afford to wind up in a situation where they’d have to explain things to their friends or be suspected darkly by their instructors.

The instructors paid special attention to such matters; moreover, they gave the boys the opportunity to observe for themselves the purity of their own inclinations or the nature of their own deviations.

The two boys were especially sensitive to the exceptional atmospheric pressure of the locale, and also to the scientific aims of the place as they understood them, though neither of them had ever shown any touchiness; their reputation was firmly based. Hans always behaved as if he stood above everything that had happened or might happen to him; he was looked upon as privileged in the school, where being privileged was usually considered as being at odds with the communal spirit and the boys were contemptuous of it. The service personnel were forbidden to establish personal relationships with the boys. Any kind of bias or self-consciousness might threaten the accuracy of observation. Yet the men and women on the staff, who came from nearby villages and the little medieval town nearby, could not treat Hans as anyone but the lord and master of the place. Bastard or not, they did not much care.

They tried to please him in small things — even when unnoticed, as it were — and he shared these friendly benefits and advantages fairly with Hendrik. The imperceptibility of these activities was what convinced the others that Hans had real historical prerogatives, which was a good reason they should listen to him. The scientific supervisors of the institute erred, however, in thinking they controlled every aspect of their observations. What is more, not only the kitchen personnel, the stokers and scullery maids, but the teachers and of course the boys all knew that Hans’s mother owned the two ancestral homes, the enormous forests between Thum and Wolkenstein, the lumberyards, and even the small forest train that, with much whistling, ran across the Wiesenbad viaduct every afternoon, and that she was also connected at the highest level to the scientific research being conducted here.

It was naturally humiliating to think they were objects of a scientific experiment, yet all of them went to sleep and awakened with this unpleasant thought.

Knowing they were here at the express wishes of their parents should have made the boys consider the matter settled. Yet it gave them no rest. When they went home for three weeks each summer, they dared not ask if their parents had any knowledge of the experiments or what sort of papers they had signed regarding their sons’ placement in the school and their being subject to hygienic observation. That was the key phrase. The boys searched and several of them found such papers among their parents’ documents; indeed, the parents had signed binding notes that referred to the appropriate law and clearly spelled things out.

This summer, Hans was not allowed to go home because the consulting committee members thought an extreme session of observation was necessary in his case. They inflicted this punishment on him because of the break-in. They exposed the boys in an embarrassingly elaborate way, for the process of exposure itself became the object of the observation. The baroness, helpless against a scientifically defended order, was in fact relieved to hear of it. Then she wouldn’t have to waste three summer weeks in hopeless family time. She preferred not to acknowledge what sort of danger awaited her son during the extreme observation. She was also afraid of him; the boy’s sheer physical existence filled her with aversion.

When occasionally, after awakening, she thought about it, she felt she’d be much happier without him, though she could not have known much about her possible happiness. Frankly, she’d spent the months of her unwanted pregnancy in anger and desperation about her new, unknown condition. Her misshapen body, the nausea and vomiting, made her restless. She could not deny that she felt nothing but hatred about her pregnancy. As if she’d been cheated out of her own body and punished too, since she couldn’t talk about it to anyone.

Perhaps that is why Hans arrived in this world way ahead of time. Which filled the baroness with a sense of total disaster. There were two interdependent beings in the world, but knowledge of their mutuality caused her not one iota of joy. Within a few days, she went dry. She probably shouldn’t have had those thoughts. To pull the little kerchief over his head, or the light blue coverlet. Another reason why the baby had to be given to a wet nurse as soon as possible. Yet he starved on the stranger’s milk, turned blue crying each time he was fed, and screamed through entire nights, even when they fed him at regular intervals with both milk and the best food.

Karla was weak; one morning, before going to the Auenberg estate, the baby unexpectedly fell silent after protracted screaming. It would have been good if he’d stopped breathing. Karla had the impression that the baby accepted his death. As if, together with her, he was waiting for his breathing to cease. She stood by the crib, silent and motionless, and wished along with him that he’d perish. Perish. But he did not. Even though she wished it, oh, how she had wished it.

Nobody could talk to her about unconditional motherly love without making her laugh, even out loud.

She knew precisely the enduring feeling with which the mother hates her son and does everything to kill in him at least the element alien to her because of his sex.

Or else he should perish.

But she did not go beyond thinking those thoughts, since she would have considered it beneath her to lose her dignity, notwithstanding her hatred for him.

After a few summer days had passed, once the others started coming back, Hans no longer expected that the baroness would come for him and at least take him to their house in Annaberg. He probably was waiting not for his mother but for the house, or for the taste and sweet fragrance of the warm walnut-filled pastry she once had bought for him at the weekly fair in Annaberg. He could not forget the lightness of this pastry and the creamy texture of the filling.

Nor forget that there was something in the world that his mother had once actually bought for him.

When left alone, this was the feeling with which he viewed his body.

As some kind of a test, he caught his penis and testicles between his thighs and showed himself like that to the others in the shower. They liked it, and laughed; Hendrik especially liked the idea that Hans might have a pussy, but only Kienast imitated him.

Hans could be content that things were going well among the other boys without him. He consoled himself with all sorts of things. He found acting like this somewhat childish, but it was unavoidable and he needed hiding places for it. He also could keep in contact with them even during months of silence, and he did not have to relinquish his leadership. He was allegedly ostracized, which, along with the denial of summer vacation, was considered the most severe punishment, but it was made even more severe by an attempt to cast suspicion on Hendrik and to separate the two of them. That is why he put on the little monkey act with his pussy in the shower. Hendrik had not been punished, because they wanted to create the impression that he was the one who had betrayed their conspiracy. In the shower Hendrik well understood that Hans did not believe this.

That is why he did not laugh along with the others and his eyes glittered with joy.

There was no precedent for imposing a permanent ostracism on a boy or for expelling him. So theoretically they could do anything they wanted to, which Hans and Hendrik comprehended and, within certain limits, exploited. They even succeeded in exchanging letters that, after repeated readings, they both burned. Had they not enjoyed their heroism, they couldn’t have done it. Even so, it was hard to watch the pages of those letters shrivel and turn to ashes in the flames, pages on which Hendrik called Hans my dear friend and Hans called Hendrik his dearest brother. But they couldn’t have known that their instructors had information about most of these secret activities and the letters had not been undocumented. While the others were away and the service staff was busy with the major annual cleaning, painting, and whitewashing, Hans could get along without speaking to anyone. It was actually interesting to live without talking. Along with his friends subjected to similar punishment, he was mainly unsupervised for those summer weeks. Recalcitrant staff members gravely violated the strict rules and regulations so that others could observe and then write about the boys’ activities. And thus, at a given moment, all Schuer had to do was go to his desk and, while Baroness Thum zu Wolkenstein was still struggling with her first surprise, take out a paper listing the illegal activities that Hans von Wolkenstein had engaged in, in the company of another pupil named Hendrik Franke, the rules and regulations he had violated, and to what sort of sensual excesses he had yielded. How many times they had broken into Schultze’s office together, the papers they had taken from it and then destroyed, the content of the letters they had exchanged, and what sort of complicated relationship they had entangled themselves in with two trusted members of the service staff.

Which put his mother in a very difficult situation; the baroness struggled with tears of anger. At the very same time, this disobedient child was crouching at the foot of the central pier of the viaduct arching seventy meters over the valley, with the rumbling noise of the waterfall rushing down from the craggy ledge of the mountain slope opposite, while his friends in the botanical garden discussed the situation in their own argot.

He was crouching on a yellow-brown rock, where the whimsically cascading, gurgling, and splashing water sometimes flowed over his feet. He was wearing his institutional uniform, a sailcloth shirt sewn in a military fashion with brown corduroy knee pants. On the banks of the stream he had taken off his high-quarter buttoned shoes and corkscrew-patterned socks and hidden them in the high sedge. Because the instructors often played tricks on the boys by taking away their scattered shoes or clothes.

His bare soles clung firmly to the rough-surfaced rock, but making the slightest move caused it to wobble under him.

He did not want to lose his balance.

In this early afternoon hour, when above the high ridge of the Frauenholz gorge the last rays of the sun were disappearing, taking their warmth with them, the end-of-summer air in the valley acquired a sharp edge.

The smell of resin and wild marjoram was everywhere.

He leaned as far forward as the wobbly rock allowed, raised a stick over the clear water, concentrating on something in it, below its turbulent wild rushing. A strange, never-seen-before creature among the stones. Perhaps the corpse or torn-off limb of a creature; just then a new current shoved it under another stone. He would not leave it there; in a little while he’d pluck it out from under the stone and trusting to the current would ceremoniously put it back. He could just barely reach it with his stick. Just enough to turn it over. Whether it was a living creature or a dead one, he wanted to see its belly. The rock wobbled a little, the water splashed, and it wouldn’t be pleasant to fall in. A pale piece of flesh that had lost its color in the water. A shred of flesh from the body of one of the suicide boys ripped on the rocks as he was hurtling down. Or a drowned slug, or torn-off crabmeat. At this spot the current was so powerful that it washed away any telltale blood, and bits of clothes were thrown out on the grass or stones.

He had not yet decided whether to consider his find an independent being, a dead body, or some kind of waterlogged piece of meat or flesh that couldn’t be dislodged from the stones, when from on high, a little above the waterfall, from the rim of the gorge hidden by the oaks, he heard the familiar rattle of rolling stones.

Someone was coming down off the Ochsensprung. And in the next moment he could make out that it was a female. The color of her skin and something red gave her away. Or multiples of red. A brief flash among the foliage as she continued lowering herself carefully, accompanied by the happy noise of the stones.

Whoever undertook the neck-breaking stunt of coming down the dangerous and twisting trail — used mainly by deer — had to watch their step. And look out for what to hold on to next, assess which root, branch, or sapling would give support or hold one up for a split second while shifting weight for the next step.

A simple slip might mean serious injury.

Hans straightened up a little. To see the figure better, though he knew he should flee. He did not want simply to throw away his stick. To run, to flee as inconspicuously as possible, careful not to step on wobbly rocks so as not to fall into the frothing, ice-cold water. He cast a last look at the strange phenomenon he’d neither fished out nor managed to identify. With a few well-directed jumps he was off and away, looking back at the dark mountainside where the rustling in the bushes grew louder, which was encouraging. He clambered up the steep riverbank and felt a childlike joy at having escaped, then waded into the high grass, which benevolently swallowed him and covered him up. He went on listening, and panting, while he retrieved his buttoned shoes and thick knee socks. They had become damp with dew, and within moments he too felt damp as he lay in the grass. The approaching girl’s arms and legs and the red flashing of her skirt disappeared behind a group of rocks. On that stretch, the serpentine path lessened the steepness of the slope. When she clears it, the landscape will come upon her as if she were at a comfortable lookout point. Before that happened, he had time to stuff the socks into the shoes and, bending low, start off. Back to the protection of the railway viaduct’s enormous central pier.

He had to step on stones. Barefoot, he quickly picked his way over the yellowish, body-colored stones.

Every step made some noise and was painful.

His plan was to use the cover of the pier to back into the woods. From there he could stroll along the riverbank without any danger of being discovered, over the rather prickly ground covered with pine needles under the hundred-year-old trees, so that at a more distant spot he could put on his socks and shoes.

He looked back once more to see who this person was, what she might want. He did not know what he feared discovering or what kept him there despite his fear.

She was a girl somewhat older than he; at the sight of her Hans grew a little uncertain. Her dark hair was in braids with bows at the end made of the same red material as her skirt. She was carrying a small basket, as if she were collecting berries or mushrooms.

For that, she was too late in the valley.

Where the serpentine section of the trail ended, the most dangerous stretch began.

The trail continued downward, deepened by water-worn gullies and blocked with fallen stones. She could not help sliding, or grasping at shrubs, tendrils, roots, or dried-out stalks that would not break or be pulled off when she tugged at them; she was becoming flustered. The red-bowed braids now fell forward, now snapped back, her breasts quivered under her blouse, her little basket slipped up to her shoulder and almost slid off her wrist; everything was crackling and snapping. Which the valley and the viaduct echoed many times over. She was rushing headlong down the trail; her skirt kept flying up. Hans saw her long brown thighs and pink panties, and then the same series of pictures again.

He was afraid she might have to cover this steepest stretch of the trail sliding on her bare bottom.

Such a stupid girl.

Who doesn’t know how to dig in with her heels and the outer edge of her shoes.

How can a girl be so dumb.

She was not in the least scared; the speed and danger made her rather determined.

Hans was whimpering and cheering her on. He clung to the base of the pier, craning his neck to see her better. As if for the first time in his life he was seeing a feminine being, fully exposed and with nothing held back, struggle with circumstances and the gravity of her body.

She thrilled him, though he could not imagine what she was doing here.

He would catch her.

If they sent someone with an urgent message from Annaberg, that person would come on a bicycle. When relatives came on foot from Wiesa or Wiesenbad to look for some staff member, they came from the opposite direction, from the Bismarck tower.

He will surprise her.

This is just crazy, that someone should be such a clumsy bungler.

But she reached the bottom without mishap, slamming against an uprooted tree. She grasped it, supported herself on it, and rested a little, panting and looking at the stream, which she still had to cross, and adjusted her skirt and blouse. Also her breasts, with a single movement under her blouse, which stunned Hans for a moment as he clung more tightly to the warmth of the pier.

He was incredulous; this could not be happening.

It was obvious that she’d have to take off her shoes to get across the shallows, which was not without dangers. For a second Hans imagined that in fact she was coming to see him. That she wanted to visit him in great secrecy. But this made no sense.

As if she had been exchanged for someone else during the lapsed time, she had changed completely. The change, for which Hans was unprepared, aroused unpleasant feelings. How could he have known that such a change was possible in the world. What he saw was that Ingke Einbock had grown taller and heavier. She had grown out of her little girlhood, while Hans, despite his summer adventure, remained a little boy, which made him ashamed. The girl had the upper hand now; that was his definite impression.

Which tortures every boy.

Not wanting to feel what he was feeling.

Not to think of what he perpetually thought about.

She had always seemed above him somehow, and this had bound them together as their deepest shared secret.

He watched eagerly to see what she was doing and how.

Perhaps readying himself to help her if the need arose. If she slipped on the stones, which was a definite possibility. Tripping and plopping into the water with her stupid panties; and if she did, she’d never be able to get up again. Dumb Ingke Einbock, but why did she come here. This sort of thing had happened to him when they tested their adroitness and played with this danger. There was an obvious basic rule for crossing the shallows that it was inadvisable to ignore. The current there was very strong, and slippery colorless algae covered the underwater stones. The cold of the clear, rushing water penetrated him to the bone. It felt as if a blade wanted to slice off his feet. Anyone who dared to put two feet down on an algae-covered stone was a lost cause.

His breath might stop, but he was already in the water and his limbs were bruised on the stones. Without anything to hold on to he might slip, because underwater everything was slipping along with him. As if the mouth of hell had sucked him in and he was about to slide down its gullet. Somebody, someone standing on a dry rock, would reach out and help him, that too had happened, or the current quickly pulled him away. He would still feel how pleasantly warm it was to live inside his flesh, but the cold of the water was already hurting. And to prevent the end, he would have to stay on a dry rock with at least one foot, and cling to it.

But if he had already fallen in, there was no other way to escape except to give in to the insane current, to entrust his helpless body to the elemental force of the water.

Which nobody really likes to do.

He had to be careful not to wind up in the whirlpools at the waterfall or knock against the treacherous boulders. But the force of the current made this almost impossible to avoid. The frigid water had already numbed him, deprived him of his senses. He could not swim more than a few strokes. And it didn’t make any sense to try. At best, he could steer himself, have some control over his direction, to keep the whirlpools from taking him under the waterfall, because whoever was caught there would not be disgorged without serious injuries. And when past this danger, where an increased volume of water widened and deepened the streambed, it was possible to wriggle his way to shore. He could check the blue spots and bruises on his body; hours later, his teeth were still chattering, his body still trembling and shivering.

And the other boys were laughing inside their warm bodies.

And there was no point in answering them, because no sound would come from his mouth and his teeth were chattering.

Ingke was obviously familiar with the rules; she adroitly avoided the underwater boulders. Only when she reached the middle of the stream did one of them wobble under her. This was the moment when Kienast was summoned from the tree nursery, they were about to put the tools away, he should leave everything and report to Schultze’s office.

Kienast was under the boys’ protection, but no power could cross Schultze’s wishes.

There was but a short hour until dinnertime.

And Ingke Einbock had come from Annaberg to see him; she did want to visit him.

She laughed but did not answer questions.

She took a small letter out of her blouse — a calling card in an envelope. And as Hans opened the envelope, which had not been glued shut, he right away recognized his father’s handwriting. His father did not write as Germans did.

The important thing, Ingke Einbock said, is to keep your mouth shut.

We’ll tear it into tiny pieces.

There were altogether three sentences on the card. A peculiar dread seized Hans whenever he had to read his father’s letters written in Hungarian. And when he wrote in German, it was barely understandable because he made so many grammatical mistakes. Hans knew Hungarian, but since he had first learned to read and write in the Slovak school in Fánt, the visual image of Hungarian words remained alien to him. And how glad he had been to have managed to forget his father for good, along with dread of his language.

He should prepare: his father was going to take him away from here.

As soon as he read this first sentence, he was filled with completely unprecedented gratitude and joy — that his father loved him after all, would take him to himself — and at the same time he was also filled with an unspeakable, crushing pain. Because then he’d have to leave Hendrik forever, yes, he knew it would be forever, and would have to leave Kienast at the mercy of the other boys; and leaving would be the most dastardly betrayal possible. He must keep this to himself; he cannot tell them about it.

The first sentence made it clear that the secret Communist organization had made its initial move and, judging by the circumstances, Ingke Einbock’s mother was part of it.

He had not yet read the second sentence when he wavered. It wouldn’t be so painful to give up Ingke Einbock. He wanted to deny having read the first sentence. To reject this little note, to say no. For him, Kienast and Franke were more important than his father, who all his life had done nothing but leave him.

He’d left him.

It will be an escape, wrote his father in the next sentence. He will be notified in advance of the time.

It was good to forget about his father for another reason, which was that Hans was afraid he had inherited his father’s blood. No one has said so, but that seemed to be the examiners’ assumption, based on tests and observation, which by law made sterilization necessary.

Your father, it said at the bottom of the little card.

He wanted to read it again, look at it some more, and he felt the girl’s eyes on him. He knew he was being weak, that he could not abandon them. Yet those last two words were very strong; he also could not say no. So as not to weaken in front of the girl — he had never felt such weakness before, he had never fainted — he sought the warmth of the stone pier at his back.

This stone, gneiss, behaves peculiarly in every life situation. Lukewarm a moment ago from the rays of the sun, it was now ice-cold. Or perhaps he just felt it like that. Gneiss can easily be split, because of its foliation, though one could see no trace of any cracks on the stones in the streambed. Maybe this is the last time he will see these stones in the stream. Because of the constant friction, they had lost their hard edges and lay on one another like stuffed pillows. They deceived the observer with their friendly, fleshlike colors and cushiony forms. Anyone who bumped into gneiss or wished to go at it with a chisel could testify that it was as hard as granite. To which, in its mineral composition, by the way, it is identical.

The area’s characteristic nobiliary nests were all built of this stone, the mountaintop castles of Freiberg, Wolkenstein, Schwarzenberg, Schlettau, Frauenstein, and Hartenstein — fortresses and citadels raised at the end of the Middle Ages to protect the roads along which the silver, precious stones, and valuable industrial ores mined here were transported. He looked at what he had to leave behind, and everything seemed different. They would take him to Moscow. The even older bulwarked fortress churches, sacrificial chapels, bridges, viaducts, and — grandest and most impressive of all — the church of St. Anne in Annaberg had also been built of this stone. Every window of the Wolkensteins’ house gave on its soaring apse with its arched windows. The fleshlike color of the stone filled the interior spaces in every season and in every part of each day. A veritable cathedral that, with its rustic exterior of this cut stone and its interior suffused with light, was considered an exceptional Gothic masterpiece.

And while the two children squatting at the base of the viaduct’s central pier let go the tiny shreds of the torn-up letter, piece by piece, Kienast had to strip naked and lie down on the examination table, which in that first second felt frightfully cold.

This was not the first time it happened to him — something the boys feared so much that even later they wouldn’t talk about it, not even among themselves.

That Hans and Hendrik wanted to find Schultze’s secret notes was not by chance. They knew what they were looking for and which data they wanted to destroy at all cost.

It was a brand-new method and therefore they could not have known what it was, in fact, or what occurred during the specific examination, obviously focused on specific results. In order to make plaster casts of certain sensitive parts of their bodies, Schultze had to put them in a state of hibernation. The casts, in strictly sealed little boxes, were sent by registered mail to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics on Ihne Street, in Berlin. These samples came under the charge not of Baroness Thum but, in a separate unit of the great collection, of Baron Schuer. He prepared the plan for the examination together with directors of other institutes. The Psychological Institute’s director was of the opinion that any other, more legal form of sample-taking would have an unpredictable effect on the pupils’ mental development that might seriously jeopardize the examination itself.

Actually, they were dissatisfied with the results. They could obtain no data on the erect state of individual penises and rarely, mainly by chance, did they receive any of the boys’ sperm smear.

Yet they knew from reliable sources that American researchers had carried out similar examinations among schoolboys.

While lying down, they had to turn on their side. Schultze gave them an injection in their buttocks and within a few minutes they were hovering between sleep and wakefulness. Then he stuck them with another hypodermic, but this they saw only from his movements and could not feel. Because the peculiar feeling of losing a grip on wakefulness and bodily alertness spread quickly. Instead of the usual sense of being alive, only a strange feeling of themselves remained, reminiscent of nausea. Schultze kept guiding them back to wakefulness by telling them to turn this way and that. So it was clear the injection was not fully soporific. Their mental capacity could be awakened, while the brain stem forever swallowed up the pictures that went with the sentences spoken. The boys did what he asked them to do, though they no longer knew what he asked, who was asking, and what they did and how. It was like a severe state of unconsciousness, which is why they had no idea what experiment-related questions they were answering, answers that Schultze, sitting at his desk, carefully wrote down.

But even weeks later they knew that somebody had asked them questions about something, and this knowledge perturbed several of them, as when imagination slides into a sense of reality.

They also had memories of occasionally having to change position. Schultze or somebody helping him, perhaps a woman, would use straps to immobilize their limbs in certain positions, so that they would not move until the plaster had set.

This kind-voiced woman may have mixed the plaster too. They sensed this; they sensed things from behind the nausea but did not remember them the same way.

That somebody was shaving something.

This remained as a strange presentiment, probably near the place where the brain records the pictures of imagination.

They saw but did not feel, or rather they could not comprehend even their own thoughts; and since they did not feel, they continually fell back into the peculiar deep sleep, where awareness shunted their lives onto tracks other than the ones they’d started out on at the urging of their parents, or on which they would have progressed conscientiously despite their parents and superiors.

In Annaberg, the church hill itself was nothing but a massive, extensive block of this rock formation, barely covered with a surface of soil. Gneiss supported the entire small town on its back. A few steps from the church and built of the same stone stood Kirchber 1, the Wolkensteins’ modest town house where, to the great delight of the grown-ups, Hans always played with the housekeeper’s little niece Ingke more peacefully than with anyone else. The adults could safely leave the children to themselves for long periods. Not to mention that through this rock formation the silver mines’ narrow, ever-dripping shafts lowered themselves to the bowels of the earth; an endless labyrinth of narrow horizontal passageways led to yet more darkly gaping shafts from which one could reach still lower galleries. Ingke’s father was a mineworker who had been fired several times; he was always organizing his mates, although his grandfather and even his great-grandfather had also been miners, as was almost every man in the family.

This schist-textured, metamorphic, structurally composite and crystalline stone, whose ingredients include quartz, feldspar, and mica, does not differ from granite in its texture but deviates from it greatly in its fascinating colors. Its dominant color stems from orthoclase, a feldspar that is white, red, and gray, in which quartz forms limpid gray specks.

All this, however, can only be seen close up, preferably under a magnifying glass or microscope.

Keinast’s place remained empty during supper, there was not even a setting for him, from which the other boys deduced exactly what was happening to him upstairs. After hibernation, the boys awakened the following day, at midday or even in the afternoon, not in Schultze’s office but in one of the beds in the convalescence ward. When they came downstairs, everyone could see what they had gone through and was very considerate of them. For a day, they moved about confusedly among the others, like sleepwalkers. Yet it was not so much sleepiness or the leaden fatigue in their limbs that kept them captive, but their peculiar state of consciousness, from which they did not want to return to their frightening, boring everyday existence. Some of them remembered that Schultze threw a sheet over their shoulders and seemed to have told them to hold it tight about them because they had to go across the corridor on their own. Schultze followed them, telling them what to do, which way to turn in the corridor, and then carefully closed the high window in the recovery room and tucked them in, lest they catch cold.

Those who already had pubic hair were surprised to see the next day that it was gone. They’d probably shaved it off, Schultze or the kind-voiced woman who helped him occasionally. They did not talk about this either, not even when in the bathroom they saw what had happened. Residues of plaster revealed something about the nature of the examination; they had to scrape off white bits on the fuzz of their bellies or loins that had been missed by the razor.

A mass of gneiss appearing before us as a rock is wine-red when seen at a distance; from other viewpoints and at different parts of the day, it is more ocher, at times flesh-colored. When broken in pieces, it seems yellowish or grayish brown. The biotite or muscovite micas glitter in it; these micas always arrange themselves parallel to each other inside the stone.

This very prevalent stone, though it is not always easy to notice close to the earth’s surface, can thank its mining and architectural career to the parallels that dominate its structure, which allow it to be split easily along its layers. Several varieties of its texture are known; in veined gneiss, the micas are arranged in ribbons, in layered gneiss the ingredients change with each layer, while in barred gneiss they line up in vertical rows, in slabs.

Whatever the texture, the stone can be split along the parallel lines.

Humans do the least of the splitting. It is mainly wind, frost, and water that do it; one might say that miners merely follow the natural cracks when they split the rock with their chisels to get to the silver in the veining.

Gneiss forms a large thick envelope around the globe. On it rest all sorts of deposits and sediments; when the magma moves underneath it and opens the structural cracks, the eruptive rocks burst to the surface through this three-thousand-meter stone casing.

Gneiss was probably the first crust of the earth to cool off.

I’ve Been in This Building Before

I had no idea what would happen. But I was very familiar with the wind rushing into my face from the dark City Park.

I enjoyed knowing the wind.

I would have liked the love story to be over and just to leave without a word and continue my own doomed life. The street was sparkling wet, but the wind stopped hitting us in the face once the rain let up. I was past something pointless, something completely unacceptable, I should think. If I had to leave, well, let me leave. I must get over my stupid mistake at last. I longed for nothing more than to be able to walk away, without explanation, stroll to the bus terminal, get on the lighted empty bus, let the conductor come so I could buy a ticket from him, see the driver get on in his leisurely way at the starting time, and let the two of them take me away from here. Maybe I could get off at the first stop and, unnoticed, go back to City Park and watch what the men were doing in there.

I already knew where she lived and that was more than enough knowledge for one day.

What else should interest me.

But nothing was that simple. And not only because Simon didn’t want me to get him cigarettes. He wanted nothing from me and nothing to do with me; he indicated this clearly, as if he were ignorant of the rules of human tactfulness or deliberately wanted to violate them. He didn’t want to accept my politeness. I could think of no reason to give him for leaving, and I also couldn’t leave because of my silent promise to her. Or anyway she’d raised a silent request that I didn’t have the strength not to honor. I’d had enough of them, I’d had enough of her husband, yet I could not give up.

My muddled curiosity, my disgusting helplessness kept me here. I’d had enough of myself. I should have known in advance. Only a total betrayal could have satisfied me. It would have felt good to deceive the woman, take revenge on all the insults. What could she possibly have to do with me, with such a wretch. And what could I have to do with her if she belonged to such an uncouth boor. Whom I couldn’t figure out because of his coat. But what was the point of being fed up with myself and with them if all I wanted to know was how my damn life would continue in their company. I couldn’t get free of this woman until I learned to say no. I was doing what she’d asked me to do, I had actually become her mute slave. I am waiting for her again; for months I waited for her, making myself impossible — in my own eyes, mainly. And I wait in vain. At college, my absences were piling up furiously, I did not go to classes, and it was clear that at the end of the semester they wouldn’t let me take the finals. If Simon knew how laughable I had made myself already, he’d be content and not bother humiliating me further.

Of course, I couldn’t have known why I did or didn’t do the things I did or didn’t do. When it comes to judging one’s intentions, a person generally piles errors on top of errors. It’s possible that the woman had no silent request to make of me and I had fatally misunderstood something. Did not understand. I’d had enough of her daring husband, for whom I still could not deny my childlike admiration. I’d have been happy to get him his cigarettes. While looking for an excuse to set foot in a bar that had always been off limits to me. I couldn’t have anything else to do with him, even though I’d offered him my readiness to humiliate myself. Because of him, I became like a dog that, snarling and whimpering, submits to the hierarchy of the pack. As soon as I’d gotten into his car, I saw clearly that this was an unpredictable and overbearing man. But suddenly I remembered Ilonka Weisz, whom I had accompanied a few times to the bar when she went to get wine in a large clamp-topped bottle for her drunkard father. I’d always kept away from daring people; I knew well the senseless, power-hungry games of weak men.

The order of my accusations could not be reversed. If I could not find a good reason for a quick departure, then I had to chalk this up to my own cowardice and stupidity, and not blame him. All my moral fury fell back on my own head. Seeing his craziness, I was mainly ashamed of my cowardice. I could not have forgotten with what well-prepared wiles Ilonka Weisz lured me up to the fourth floor, where her churlish brothers beat me within an inch of my life. Why do I need a reason or explanation, I should just walk out on them both; to whom do I owe a reckoning; I am rebelling against myself.

Explaining the obvious to myself.

I cannot solve a problem that any healthy person could easily solve by relying on natural selfishness. I don’t dare decide what would be best for me. Or if I did decide, and now I really have, then the obligation to be polite, which had been hammered into me, proved stronger than any sense of my physical well-being. I have a weak character, or at least weaker than that of anyone else who steers his life according to his own physical and mental interests. The woman did not make me characterless, but she’s the one who pushed me most deeply into the pit of my character weakness. What a ridiculous person I am. Surely more vile and stupid than others. I was full of reproach; in my deep dissatisfaction, I kept saying I was born to be a servant. I’d rather get out of this thing than hurt anyone with my decision; rather endure things than relinquish my precaution. Incessantly, I wanted to get over my refined upbringing, and failed to notice how I was clinging to her, cherishing her every command with delight and tender loving care.

We were standing on either side of the car and I was watching, with confused longing and in search of a saving idea, the lit-up buses and the shadows of men drinking in the old familiar light of the bar. I did this also so I wouldn’t have to look at Simon’s repulsively thin figure.

He did not take his belligerent eyes off me; he saw something I didn’t know in myself.

He was leaning on the half-open car door with one arm, his elbow on the roof, his chin propped up on his thumb. As if he knew what I was thinking about, with what moral doubts I was struggling. His self-satisfaction was a slap in the face because what I sorely lacked was a healthy dose of self-confidence.

Although I held so many things against him, his openness, flexibility, and slimness, there was nothing I could do about or say against his complacency. There was no direct relationship between the physical presence of this other human being and my opinion of him, I understood that perfectly well. One keeps forgetting and therefore must repeatedly bring together these two kinds of experience and knowledge. In the darkness of the old car, I had first noticed the adolescent fragility of his neck. Now, unhindered and from close up, I had to cope with the reality of his face.

And why shouldn’t I want to comprehend with all my senses this person from whom I must tear Klára away.

What virtues should I have, how could I be completely different from what I am, to win her away from this miserable character. It was almost like asking how I might make myself as repulsive as he seemed. But the provocative reality of his face disturbed me and kept me captive — independently of the woman. As if with his features he was playing a game, and I had to accept unconditionally the rules of this game. While I was thoroughly ashamed for him and had no idea what to do about it. Still, I felt I was accepting something unfamiliar, willingly entering something I knew nothing about. Thin men like him seem always to wear shirts at least two sizes larger than their neck requires, which makes them look very vulnerable and fragile. But your surprise is all the greater when you come up against their tenacity, shrewdness, and aggressiveness. At the same time, I discovered that what until then I had thought was just a dark shadow on his forehead was a black spot full of ominous little lumps. As he leaned forward, his elbow still resting on the car’s roof, his dark shiny hair fell over the hideous blotch on his forehead. As if it explained the dread he aroused in me, although I could not think of the name of the skin disease.

The streetlamp on its cable was swinging in the wind directly above us. Shadows from the hair fallen over his forehead stretched into his face, long fingers reaching into him at the whim of the swinging lamp. Occasionally, light flared up on the dark surface of his eyes. As if he were saying something in tune with the swinging lamp, nodding along with its rhythm, but then it turned out he’d said nothing, after all. As if he wanted to ask which of us would put up with this situation longer. Come on, push your beaver up just a little. It was a provocation but not a challenge because he was without armor too. Let’s see how far we get, he seemed to say, how far with each other. Which to some extent referred to the woman but not completely, because with his look he touched my face, reached in among the various layers of my character. His posture called to me, his sheer gaze commanded that I do the same. As if both of us were looking into the same mirror, and in my surprise I had no choice but to lean closer, yet what I saw was not my own disgustingly familiar mug.

I can’t deny that the beauty of the face surprised me. It probably surprised me with the keenness of its intelligence. Some profiles say nothing; the sudden turning face-to-face is what takes your breath away. Or the other way around: you are disappointed when an impressive profile belongs to an unimpressive face. His beauty looked out at me from the drawn, bony face of a day laborer. As if he were looking at me from the depth of several centuries. He wore a white shirt buttoned to the very top, as road workers on the Great Hungarian Plain do on holidays; he was flaunting his stubbly chin and his gauntness. His features were symmetrical and harmonious; a long face, somewhat oriental, with almost motionless eyes. It was surprising how much undisguised suffering had been carved into his features. He seemed like a reticent man, or at least he wanted to seem like one. And not only the suffering of the soul had been carved undisguised into his features, but also deprivations of the body, penury, his inhibitions, the stifled, freewheeling fury of his possessiveness.

I had not had experiences like that, yet all this was not unknown to me, not distant, because the secret passion of sufferance brought me close to him. To a person who perhaps denied his feelings as passionately as I did. Denial had written horizontal wrinkles into the skin of his forehead. It was enough to raise his eyebrows a bit, as he did just now, looking inquisitive, to have his forehead show a piling up of centuries-old furrows, darkened by the spot of the skin disease. His eyebrows were beautiful, thick, dense, dark, very strong and manly. This man is a wolf. As I searched my mind for the name of the skin disease, I remembered that it had something to do with the wolf or with legends of bloodthirsty wolves.

Denial and experience left nothing distrustful or indistinct on his face; they planted radially expanding dry lines at the corners of his eyes and surrounded his thin lips with two aggressively sharp grooves. The features that denial and experience had drawn on his face did not allow him to hide his emotions or his affections. He must have been too sensitive to be truly reticent and negative. His intentions and his faculties were separate. I wanted to lean closer to him just as he too seemed to be offering himself up; with the flexibility of thin people, and with his openness, he somehow wound up closer to me. I wanted to have a glance between the dark shadows; I put my elbows on the car, with a movement meant to be as effortless as the ones his body had suggested.

He could not have anticipated that my interest in the characteristics of men was so uninhibited; I surprised and astonished him, but he accepted it immediately, with no revulsion. But I felt I was in danger, I’d got myself into danger, now I would abandon my upbringing, give up something to hold on to. It may have seemed to him that I was deliberately imitating his movements when the opposite was the case: I was guided by the raw feeling of attraction as, leaning on my elbows just as he was, I stared into his face or into the core of his soul. The only difference was that I put my chin in the palm of my hand instead of propping it up with my thumb.

He must have enjoyed managing to bend me this way.

That’s how we were staring at each other; the wet car roof glittered dully.

If his skin had not been so translucently tender and at the same time his stubbly cheekbones had not been so strong and wild, if his aggressive chin had not been marked by a charming cleft, if he did not have finely cut eye sockets, if no winding, lumpy, coarse vein ran down from his temple, and if his visage had not been buffeted by contradictory emotions, then he would have remained painfully vulnerable: a face on which every secret feeling and every humiliating experience may be quickly seen. However, as things were, one could see all the things which the man felt but which, in his own well-conceived interest, he deliberately, stubbornly, and brazenly denied.

Raw strength overwhelmed his refinement, responding crudely to his weakness. A born self-destroyer, a cool, clever ignoramus. He was put together well enough so one could not take one’s eyes from him and could not know just where one stood with him.

A dangerously long time passed without either of us saying anything.

The mutually risky game was precisely a challenge to take an open-eyed account of each other’s traits and abilities, not furtively or in secret; we should do it openly, the way animals do. Now I remembered that the oddity on his forehead, lupus in Latin, was called wolf skin in Hungarian. This name summed up my presentiment. He would be the wolf in the tale. For which one instantly feels pangs of conscience. How could I link physical attributes with a moral judgment; how could I be so unfair. The reflection of everything he could see on me quickly showed in his eyes and in the bitter lines framing his mouth. As if the aversion-provoking mark on his body was telling me that I had no chance in the current situation. There was a mildly vibrating mockery at the corner of his eye; still, I didn’t know what he saw or how he judged me. I only sensed he wanted something other than what is usual or acceptable in a relationship between two people. Perhaps his lumpy wolf’s spot filled me with disgust and his look with abject terror. I did not want to acknowledge the delight, the contemptuous satisfaction with which he was watching my face. And if, nevertheless, I opened my mouth, if I couldn’t bear the silence anymore or his supercilious and brazen visage, then the secret game would be over, because I’d refused to take a risk on the next moment, on my future.

I asked him what floor they lived on; in my confusion I looked back at the building and saw a light go out in a room on the second floor and another light go on in an adjacent room. I hated my own hoarse, hesitating voice.

He asked me in return, ready to attack, why I was asking. His glance was distrustful, as if he feared an ulterior motive.

I didn’t understand what he could be afraid of; I didn’t want to understand how I might possibly have offended him. I said, I asked because I’ve been in this building before, which is to say I know it pretty well.

He asked, when, why, how did I know the building. He was not interested in questions, and he would definitely not answer any of mine. As he spoke he pushed himself away from the car, stepping back a little, but did not let go of the open door, didn’t let it slam shut.

As if I had to follow his every move, I straightened up too.

In his leather coat, he became like an experienced interrogating officer.

I said, it was pretty long ago when I was here last, but it wasn’t just once or twice then, because my childhood is connected to this neighborhood. The woman who taught me, my piano teacher used to live here.

I see, the piano teacher, that’s very interesting, he replied sarcastically and aggressively, as if he had to retaliate instantly against my piano lessons. He hoped I’d had nice successes. My childhood must have been very happy.

I hastened to reassure him that that was not at all the case; though I got some idea of the instrument I never really learned to play well; and I didn’t understand why I was making such an effort to keep up this chatter. I said the only reason I asked was that I’d be interested to know if my piano teacher still lived here. She was a very kind, older German lady. More correctly, she was a very strict woman, I was pretty afraid of her. If she still lived here, he might know her. But I didn’t understand why I was making this report; what on earth was I explaining myself for. In Budapest apartment houses people don’t know one another, or they pretend they don’t. It was unpleasant to hear my anxious voice. Perhaps, if he knew the story of my childhood, he might be more forgiving. I won’t tell them the story. But I could not give up my false conversational style completely.

She had one of those silver-handled, black-lacquered canes, I explained; because of an accident or some illness, she limped heavily. Her hairdo and her cane made her look very refined. And the piano was in the same room where just a minute ago the light went on.

I received a short, dismissive, openly sarcastic laugh as a reply. Which meant that my refined manner, intended to smooth over all inequalities, had failed to convince him.

People who like to hide and be mysterious take every banal question as a frontal attack against them. But however I looked at them, my questions seemed harmless. People like that see a secret motivation behind every word or movement; their thinking is nothing but their own projections. Or perhaps he paid no heed to my questions so that he could ignore my presence altogether. I could not help thinking that this man might be involved in some sinister affair and I’d better keep clear of him.

Or jealousy had driven him crazy, in which case I should be more considerate.

I was angry.

I failed to understand how I could accept his surliness. Nothing should be the way I might like it, and certainly not the way his wife would. As if he were taking revenge and enjoying it immensely. Which was quite understandable, and I willingly reached out to him with my loquaciousness, to ease the tension between us, not to let the situation remain so raw; we needn’t be so vulnerable to each other. If we were already at this point and did not know how to wriggle free of each other, then at least we should give some acceptable form to the useless few minutes we were spending together. It’s really not such a big deal. But for him, it seemed, the very suggestion of a form was unacceptable and ridiculous; he judged contemptible the very method with which I meant to save what could be saved.

Every hypocrisy of the sunken bourgeois world crawled to the surface. He obviously was not familiar with what he so profoundly hated. He was a believer in openness and brute force, but at best, guided by such a belief, we could have a fistfight. I had to be the understanding party, after all, since I had elbowed my way into their life. And in that case, what was I doing trying to tone down my own surliness with this chattering tone of mine.

He could easily give himself over to any danger since he was not afraid of altercation. He saw no reason why he should let propriety restrain his emotions. He was not even afraid of running over someone with his car. I am always on guard, listen carefully, wait to see how things develop, and make myself believe that I might somehow blunt the sharp edge of existence; I continually talk beside the point. Go ahead and consider him surly, uncouth, or immoral, said the gaze, but his response was that despite my proposed method I was nothing but a wriggling worm.

I saw that he saw through me.

But that made me see him even better.

Now he is demonstratively silent, now he preaches shamelessly; he plays simultaneously with rejection and allurement, now he is talkative, now taciturn, because it’s important for him to remain unpredictable. He’s playing a calculated game with others as well as with himself, but his calculations are strictly confidential. I was even excited by the unpleasantness of the game, with him attacking me at my most vulnerable point. Because of my attempts at restoring predictability, he practically ran me down. As if saying to me he not only knew another world in which the rules of human contact were different in every imaginable way, which is to say unpredictable, but also knew me better than I could possibly know myself, and therefore, if I were brave enough, he’d offer to me this secret and unpredictable world.

He was afraid his wife would make thirty-eight minutes out of the eight she had promised, he said. She had a knack for it, for taking her time. She’s happy when she can make you wait for her. So now he’d leave me to myself and go upstairs, just to be sure she wouldn’t take even longer.

Every one of his words insulted me. I did not want to converse with him about his wife; I did not want to agree to it. Not in the tones he used, and not in any other tone. He was looking for a cheap way to squeal on his wife. To make her out as just a woman who always makes you wait. That made me even more ridiculously stubborn; I kept asking him insistently whether they lived in that second-floor apartment where my piano teacher had been.

And how long had they been living there.

But it was as if he hadn’t heard my questions.

Affably he said that he wouldn’t lock the car door. Should I change my mind and decide to leave — he saw I couldn’t make up my mind — would I first honk the horn briefly but nice and loud, to call him. The car shouldn’t be left unguarded for too long. And with that he let go of the car door and it slammed shut. He left me there; I was very confused.

I was cursing because I really couldn’t decide what to do. His words were like a coup de grace. He let me know that he had read everything on my face. If I left now, my defeat and humiliation would be complete. But it wasn’t going to be different if I stayed. His gait was beautiful, with long, smooth, and very decisive steps. He disappeared into the dim lobby, and then I heard his running steps echo in the stairs. Without thinking much about whether it was appropriate, I took off after him. As if I were claiming, completely unreasonably, that I was the one who was entitled to this building — but by building I did not mean the building.

And I certainly wasn’t going to guard his car.

Not even a bright summer day could chase away the terrible dimness from this lobby. I wanted to find out which floor he was going to, where he kept the woman captive. I already had seen how he did it, and with what. As if I could diminish the extent of humiliation I had inflicted on myself, I clung to this knowledge.

The moment I stepped into the lobby, stinking with cat urine and a musty exhalation from the basement, I froze. As if some vestige of bashfulness was stopping me.

I’ve no right to do this. Or perhaps the memory of an old fear.

With their claws sliding on the stone floor, grating and scratching, two cats disappeared down the steps leading to the basement, a dark and a lighter flash in the semidarkness. In the light of the single naked lightbulb, a black cat was chasing a red angora one.

I could hear that he did not stop on the second floor, but just then the number 5 bus rolled across the cambered cobblestones in front of the building and its noise blasting into the lobby overwhelmed the echoes of his receding footsteps. Over the racket, I could just make out a soft slamming of a door somewhere. It might have been on the third or even the fourth floor. Which again reminded me of the little girl from the fourth floor, Ilonka Weisz, and she in turn reminded me of a room in their apartment, facing the courtyard, its curtain drawn against the bright summer sunshine. Of my shame, which I haven’t been to tell anyone since then, and of the afternoon sunshine’s indifference to my shame. As I was looking at the familiar patterns of these walls in the pale light of the single bulb, I could be sure of one thing, that Uncle Pálóczky was no longer alive; only in his absence could everything become so filthy.

And then there was quiet, the light went out in the stairwell, but above the empty, yellow courtyard glittering in the wetness the wind was making great noises. There was another naked lightbulb in front of me; this one, above the list of tenants, was always lit; otherwise, darkness everywhere. Had old Pálóczky been alive, there would have been order and cleanliness, and a shade for the bulb. And the garbage cans wouldn’t have been standing like this next to the entrance either, uncovered and stuffed to overflowing. I felt as if they could not humiliate me because I wouldn’t fall into their trap. And as if the senselessness of this evening was not happening to me. Or, could I be in a different building, after all. As a child, I hadn’t noticed how seedy and run-down the place was. In the interim, the proportions changed, and the building seemed to resemble another one that was, who knows why, very familiar from a long way back.

Only ten years have gone by since then.

Or it was as if someone had told me the story of his life, from which I’d know that there was a building like this, with a piano teacher in it, where a little girl, with her little red skirt swishing on her buttocks, lured a little boy to the fourth floor, where that terrible thing happened. Just as the present evening was a useless and unavoidable disgrace. Where ten years ago he first had to pass by the foul-smelling entrance to the basement and no matter how carefully and quietly he came through the main gate, he’d still startle the cats stalking each other just as I saw them now. The red cat wasn’t familiar, but the black one was, as if the Pálóczkys’ black cat were still alive.

Strangely enough, I was the one who had these images, which that other someone hadn’t thought about since then, and if he had, he thought it best to forget them quickly.

Now too I had to reach those six steps that led up to the ground floor. In this building, because of those six steps, the ground floor was not called the ground floor. From the list of tenants, I wanted to ascertain whether my piano teacher still lived there. Or I was deceiving myself with this transparent alibi. As if I had some business there. I shouldn’t be doing this, I’ve no right, I’m ridiculous. Still, I won’t go away, I’ve nothing to fear, nothing to lose, whispered my unappeasable imagination.

One could get to the courtyard, paved with insanely yellow ceramics, from between two squat pilasters, and on one of them, on a white enamel plaque in old-fashioned blue letters, there was my childhood’s most mysterious word: mezzanine.

No doubt about it now, this was the building. A memory of quiet anxiety filled with anticipation was attached to this place.

It became a star-marked building; my piano teacher had to move out of it. When Budapest was liberated, she could move back in because it was no longer star-marked.* I never dared ask anyone what the star mark meant. I sensed from the adults’ voices that this too was part of the profound horror we had just survived and in which many had perished. Just as I didn’t dare ask what mezzanine meant. I wanted to be a famous pianist and did not want to reveal my ignorance to the adults; I was also afraid that because of my awkward question I might hear other terrible things. From certain signs, I concluded that mezzanine did not mean ground floor. Because sometimes my piano teacher asked me to go down to the Pálóczkys’ before we began the lesson and give him the piece of paper on which she had written what she wanted from the Garay Square market. When I cautiously asked her if she wanted me to take the note to the ground floor, she looked at me incredulously, not understanding what I hadn’t grasped, and asked, where else could you possibly take it, my angel, if not to the ground floor. But other times she didn’t say ground floor and didn’t say what was written on the enamel plaque, but something similar; luckily, though, she didn’t notice how bewildered I was. I wanted to learn what mezzanine was but also to be clever about avoiding the great horror.

Before you go, would you drop this key at the Pálóczkys’ on the mezzanine, she asked me once. These Pálóczkys are really angels, just angels. If he’s not there, you’ll be sure to find him in his workshop in the basement, and don’t be afraid of the cats, my angel. This mezzanine sounded almost like what she shouted when she wanted me to play a little stronger, a little softer; listen to me, my angel, this is mezzo forte, listen, this is mezzo piano now, my angel. Or should I have dropped off the key on the pianino. I was constantly looking for some acceptable solution, how to get to know more about the meaning of things without letting the horror — with all its details appearing unexpectedly — touch my skin. Uncle Pálóczky stayed in the star-marked building because concierges had to be real Christians, not converted ones. That I managed to understand from the hints. Another real Christian, my piano teacher, had to move out, but only a real Christian could be concierge, and therefore Uncle Pálóczky had to stay with the Jews. That I didn’t understand. There was this word in the building that almost meant ground floor and yet seemed to refer to the strength of a musical sound or an unknown musical instrument. Uncle Pálóczky, as he himself told it, became a living witness to how the old Weisz couple was taken away. Probably everyone but me understood the connections among these things.

Maybe I thought this building was classy because there was a better chance to see unfamiliar things than in our buildings, and maybe that’s why I didn’t notice how depressingly pathetic a place it was. People living here talked much more than in other buildings, they yelled more freely between floors and in the courtyard. Or perhaps my idea about its being classy was shaky, since I thought classy meant exceptional and alien, mysterious, and not linked to wealth or poverty. Mezzanine seemed grand to me because there was no such thing in any other building I knew. I also had to consider my piano teacher as very classy because she used a beautiful cane and limped a little. People said it was a congenital hip dislocation; this was no less exceptional than the mezzanine. That is how I thought about things. Probably decades must go by before one manages to free up certain concepts from one’s childhood imaginings. Just as I hadn’t noticed poverty, given the sparkling cleanliness and order, I paid no attention to our prosperity either. I did not know what it fed on or how unstable it was. With my grandparents, we lived on Stefánia Boulevard, where no one mentioned such qualifications, much as one speaks of breathing only when one is breathless. Earlier, my parents’ apartment on Aréna Road was no less spacious, calm, or well cared for, and neither was my maternal aunt’s apartment in Damjanich Street or that of my paternal aunt on Teréz Boulevard. Nobody talked about this, because they all considered spiritual values more important than the material world, and even when looking after their finances the reference points were spiritual ones; such allusions were part of the going bon ton. I did not sense the falsity of this for a long time, since I barely knew another world, which is to say I didn’t notice the differences. And because I had no idea about the criteria of wealth or poverty, it didn’t occur to me for the longest time that a place or neighborhood in a city had any particular meaning. And by the time I might have understood the connections among the various quarters and districts in the city of my birth, their social structure and architecture had been so extensively altered that the traditional labels had lost their meaning. There were no fancy or rich sections, and the concepts designating them sank into oblivion too.

Of course, I had a very clear idea of what was not proper.

The concept of good manners, strangely, lasted much longer than the social qualifications for bourgeois life. I could not judge the nature of bon ton, but I was free to decide what was classy. As if, for lack of a better qualified person, I had been entrusted with the decision, and indeed I behaved as a judge. Propriety, however, was set up with geometrical prescriptions coupled with draconian rulings. One had to avoid certain things at all costs, and one had to obey certain rules come hell or high water.

As to the issue of what was classy, one simply had to weigh things; no one hindered one in making the assessment. My mother’s kid sister, for example, in her infinitely large, airy, and sunny apartment looking out on the inner gardens of the always shady Damjanich Street, did not live in less privileged conditions than we did. Her rooms opened into one another and the windows reached down to the floor — French doors. That they were French was very classy too. Streetcars ran on the streets outside, yet I knew that although I lived with my grandparents on Stefánia Boulevard in a kind of provincial seclusion, if the need arose we could get to the city by taxi, and perhaps that was the reason we were exceptional. But for a long time the yellow streetcar was for me much classier than the taxi, though our secluded provincial life was classier than the noisy city. Which meant that sometimes disadvantages made someone classy and sometimes advantages. Or, put the other way around, it’s not advisable to look for the advantageous in everything if one wants to stay classy. It’s also possible that what is disadvantageous today will be very advantageous tomorrow. This was an important rule; no wonder people did not discuss it in public. You had to be two or three steps ahead of your nose to be able to judge your own position. There was some secret instruction by which not only the mere fact but also the degree or temperature of grandeur was determined. It didn’t have to do with the number of rooms, certain objects, or the condition of a given building.

Intellectually, Nínó on Teréz Boulevard had a very classy position in the family hierarchy while my aunt Irén in Damjanich Street, by dint of her person, as it were, also enjoyed a high position, since her beauty unfortunately swept everybody off their feet; yet because of her husband, she was not considered one of the refined or truly grand members of the family. Her husband was fabulously rich, people never stopped talking about it because somehow he could not get used to being rich or preserve his affluence; he was a common, uncouth man. On his hairy fingers he wore several jeweled rings and one particularly ugly signet ring of which his daughters were very afraid. He would slap them in the mouth with those ringed fingers. And the girls were no less ill-mannered. My grandmother said that my aunt Irén paid no heed to their upbringing. It would have been hard to say exactly what my aunt Irén did pay attention to. She picked the objects of her attention capriciously, making everything around her constantly move and change. The disorder in their apartment was always great; one had the impression that they were about to move out or had just moved in and had had no time to unpack. A radio was always blasting somewhere; they had several of them; they did not disturb the girls listening to the gramophone or whistling or even playing the violin at the same time.

When visiting them, Grandmother preferred to keep her gloves on and always made sure the taxi waited for her; thank you, my dears, but I’m staying only another moment.

I thought my mother was the classiest of them all, because she was the only one among us who dared openly to betray everyone, to just up and leave; she had no problem betraying the entire family, and she abandoned me without a word. I have almost no memories of her. More like a few sentences that others whispered in my presence in a way that I couldn’t understand. Regarding my mother, I can’t separate my real memories from my desires and imagination. Not only did she settle in Paris — this would not have been startling, considering her personality — but she lived in the woods of Vincennes, where the window of her bedroom gave on a lake with the fortified castle of the French kings on the far side. I knew these kings had been beheaded. I also knew that except for her name, Mother had nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing. People spoke of her with trepidation, about how she was impoverished and, save for that certain woman, had nobody and nothing, but absolutely nothing. I imagined her still wearing the same white linen dress with the red leather belt in which she had escaped on the last train. It was in the summer, a very hot summer. I knew her shoes and her bag had been red.

That certain communist woman with whom she left had come to Budapest for the World Youth Festival.

I understood the essence of these things, no matter how much they tried to hide them from me; she had run away because of the woman and she lived in this communist woman’s house at the edge of the Forest of Vincennes.

From inadvertently dropped words which I sometimes misinterpreted, I formed a picture of her in which everything had to be classy.

She was a ruthless mother, not even worthy to be called a mother, but I never believed this, no matter who said it. In classiness and strictness, she resembled my piano teacher. People also said to me, little boy, don’t even think about her, it’s not worth it. She was living in austere grandeur with someone, somewhere in a distant and alluring strange land. They said this was a moral slough. Which made me think of a puddle with pigs wallowing in it, snorting with pleasure. At other times, I imagined classiness as something like the dignity with which my piano teacher endured her lameness; she never complained. Or as the threatening act of destiny that will reach me too with its fury and one fine day strike me down.

In connection with the two women, people repeated a very beautiful word, which I also failed to understand or to remember. It was exactly the sort of word that mezzanine was. Only much later did I realize that I’d known the word for some time; of course, mezzanine meant intermediate floor. If that other beautiful word could reach and touch me, I’d become as classy as my mother was or that certain woman, who was a physician. The women in the family giggled when they talked of this, a woman physician should know what she’s doing, they said, laughing. Whenever they used that word in connection with anyone, they could barely control their squeals and giggles. The word might have referred to a specific pathological condition that the woman physician could treat as she liked. Or that Mother might have contracted this condition because she had left us for that certain woman. I did not understand why this was morally reprehensible if she’d had to do it because of her illness.

And how could she have known that a few weeks later they were going to take away my father and I would be left all alone. She couldn’t have foreseen this when she left, and when she learned of it she could no longer come back, sick as she was, to fetch me.

No matter how beautiful this word sounded, contagion and disease clung to it so strongly that in my fear I was unable to memorize it. Nevertheless, I could not withdraw my dreaded longing for my vanished mother. I kept excusing her any way I could, because I craved a mother of any kind. Sometimes I tried to imagine what if things hadn’t happened as I’d been told; what if nothing had happened, as was the case in most families. My body shuddered at the thought, I cried at the sheer happy thought that I hadn’t lost either of them; I cried a lot, but only in secret. I wanted her to come back one fine day; I even wouldn’t have minded if they’d arrested her and taken her away for what she had done. And I always worked up a fever with my constant shuddering — as I did while searching the streets for my father, whom one day, unexpectedly, I did discover.

I took after strange men on Teréz Boulevard, I walked in front of them, showed myself, maybe they’d recognize me.

The only time that I truly felt I was with my mother, that I was truly hers and nobody could take me from her, was when, to punish me, Grandmother locked me in the winter garden, full of tropical plants, where the smell of wet soil made it hard to breathe. I could endure the punishment without crying, but then I’d develop a temperature. The crying had to do with missing my mother, and it had to remain my deepest secret. I had no greater secret than this longing for my mother — until in this building in Dembinszky Street, because of Ilonka Weisz, fate finally caught up with me.

I had no idea how much time had passed.

It was hard to remember how much time might have passed, and counting from what point.

My last reference point was the bell of the Terézváros church marking eight o’clock. I couldn’t say when I’d come up these six worn steps and how long I’d been standing here, not as a child, in front of the roster of tenants. Pálóczky was gone, but on the second floor I found the name of the piano teacher, or at least her name was still on the list. And on the fourth floor, I could see the Weiszes’ name, and that meant Ilonka Weisz could appear at any moment.

In those years, young men like me tried hard to figure out what they should do to give some meaning to their complete and absolute hopelessness. I, however, was busy with the question of whether my entire life was anything but a peculiar hallucination.

I seem to exist, though in reality I have never existed, nor do I exist now and will exist only if I kill myself.

As if I could decide more reliably, given the positions of the watch hands in relation to the numbers, whether what I judged to be about an hour since the last ringing of the church bell had really and truly elapsed. I could not decide how much of that hour I had spent here, I had no reference point for that. As a saving idea, I remembered that the bus that ran in front of this building had gone past twice. The mind fixes occurrences like this, and one’s ears seem to hear them at will. But I couldn’t be sure whether the bus had really passed twice or I was only thinking it to reassure myself or to figure out what it meant if the bus had indeed gone past two times.

My mind broke everything down into tiny pieces but then left me to myself with the unconnected details. Something was happening or had already happened in the world that, without knowing the connection between the pieces and details, I could not understand.

As if feelings and emotions were not followed by value judgments and I was leaving behind periods whose duration or contents my memory could not account for.

This did not happen because my memory was faulty. Or because I remembered things randomly. My memory worked well and I remembered things not randomly but simultaneously: everything occurred to me at once. Everything was together in my mind but with no internal connections. Whatever this was, I could neither survey it nor measure its extent. It was too much and too frightening to be in the midst of a past that is all in the present. No sooner did I begin to sense or have some inkling about how things were connected in my life, and which of them were inconsequential, than paralyzing waves of emotion rushed hotly to my face. Anger and hatred for the two of them. Fear for myself. Klára Vay. Their names were right there on the nameplate. József Simon Hetés. Now I know. They lived on the third floor, in the apartment overlooking the street, above the piano teacher. And now I also know that the woman lied. They aren’t married, I know that too. It was as if I rose to the surface for a brief moment, and then timelessness quickly reclaimed me. To restrain myself, I used the fear I felt for myself and also the anger I felt for them. I had lied to her, but she’d been lying too. A half hour must surely have passed since I’d been standing here halfway between their apartment and their car, maybe only twenty minutes.

I knew perfectly well why they weren’t coming back out, and that was more important.

What a raving idiot I am. And I didn’t want to see what they were doing, as if I could possibly shoo away the image. I saw the half-open door of their bathroom, just as if I were peeking; I saw them pressed against the sink in the bathroom. Klára’s body shining in a short black slip. Ultimately, one perceives many things that never, or perhaps only later, register in one’s mind. I understood the man’s shameless and provocative winks above the glittering car roof. The dry lines on his face running together because of the deeply concealed sarcasm.

He knew why he was going upstairs.

They made each other moan and howl, just like the men on Margit Island.

While, like a dog, I was supposed to guard his car for them.

I felt as if I were being butchered; imagination made my heart pound in my throat; I was suffocating. I have to leave even if it’s just jealousy playing tricks on me, and I have to leave even if I’m making empty accusations. My breathing grew fast and heavy. Impulse carried me across the dark lobby; I ran out of the building.

But I stopped with the wind hitting me in the face.

Because I could hear noises from within.

A slamming door, a man’s voice from the depth of the courtyard, the quick tapping of a woman’s shoes. In which case it was only my jealous imagination playing tricks on me; nothing had happened in the bathroom.

Then silence, and again a door slammed.

Minutes were ticking by but they were not coming out.

And against my better judgment, this compelled me, as if I were a sneak thief, an assassin, a lousy little peeping Tom, to step back into the dark lobby. To stand next to the stinking garbage cans, listening intently. Not to go away, not to leave after all. The stench and the cold were not improbable at that moment; they were sole proof of the existing world order. But it was completely incredible that I had once again sunk so low, and the sinking wasn’t yet over, since I kept exposing myself to these things. Although nobody was forcing me, it was not a free choice. The power of the body brazenly made me do these things; I was sneaking in. The only pleasure in this was that while shamelessly obeying the compulsion, I could call myself despicable.

Perhaps for the first time in my life I realized that my physical being had nothing to do with my moral ideas or my upbringing.

While I sneaked upstairs in the dark, clinging to the peeling walls of the stairwell, all my limbs and inner organs were gently trembling with shame.

That I was capable of doing anything.

I didn’t want to fight down the sensation, yet I couldn’t imagine such a life.

In this familiar mute building, I wanted to gratify my body.

Maybe the moonlight suffused the rushing clouds, or the city lights were reflected in the sky. I really didn’t know what I was doing. In any case the well of the courtyard was shining blue. I was glad my shoes had rubber soles so that my steps were silent.

I stopped for a moment at the open gallery on the second floor. The iron railing cast an unfamiliar shadow on the patterned stone floor. As a child I’d of course never been out here at such an hour. I recalled winter afternoons when the air slowly darkened yet the yellow walls continued to glow. I wanted some certainty — about anything; or to ring their bell, to do anything that would stop the feeling of helplessness. To run up to the fourth floor, throw myself over the railing, hear the thud of my body, the shouts and screams; to end it all on the yellow ceramic paving of the courtyard.

Nothing stirred in the dark building.

I stopped on the last step and leaned my shoulder against the cold wall. No noise filtered in from the street. On the roofs, the wind continued to boom, occasionally strumming a tile or a section of the eaves.

I waited, ready to pounce.

Their apartment was the first one to the left of the stairs. If anyone crossed the foyer in the apartment, I’d hear it. The empty minutes of the waiting were measured only by my breathing. Again, I had to look in through the half-open door of the bathroom, and from what I saw there, my desire congealed in my guts. I could not help following her.

In my fear and pain I kept losing my breath, yet I was standing in front of the patterned glass of the entrance door.

The long foyer was dark, the kitchen was dark. I could see that the bathroom door was not half-open. I could hear no movement anywhere.

Their apartment did not differ from the piano teacher’s. Opposite the bathroom was the larger room’s opaque glass-paneled door on which only a weak light from the smaller room was reflected. Or who knows, maybe some light from the street, I could not decide.

Then they must be doing it in there, in that room.

By now I was not even ashamed.

On the patterned glass my breath collected as vapor.

I seemed to smell the woman’s fragrance in the air, which was the reason I had come this far and why I kept sinking ever lower. The effort not to ring their bell and a dread that I might break down the door weakened me, or my mind became hazy because in my pants fear had made my cock rear up.

Out of ideas, I staggered back down to the second-floor landing; that’s all my remaining sense could dictate to me. But my cock had stiffened to the point of real pain and hindered my walking.

The Noose Tightens

As if the question had called for him to rack his brains, the leather-capped driver did not reply for a long time.

Now and again he studied his passenger’s face in the rearview mirror, her seriousness, her self-imposed severity, the embarrassing sensuality of her features, her mildly wounded pride, and her haughtiness, which she was deploying so clumsily against him.

There was barely any light in the backseat of the Pobeda, but the oval side-window illuminated the older woman’s face. The driver scrutinized, analyzed, and seriously considered which of her features showed that she was Jewish. As a cadet in the Trieste Naval Academy he had learned from his Croatian platoon commander how to recognize Jews. Everyone had eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth, but from that it does not necessarily follow that everyone is equal at birth. When out on individual passes or when amid much noise the big gates on Via Belpoggio were opened and the cadets marched out together in smart ranks formation, they paid close attention to passersby and to the girls hanging out the windows.

That is how he explained to himself retroactively that it was not from meanness but at the dictates of their blood that they’d had an aversion for the Gottlieb child. He clung to the petty officer’s every word. Should he be tormented, as a devout Catholic, were they not obeying their racial instincts when they let the older boys take care of the Gottlieb boy.

Ever since then, observing racial features in any situation excited him.

Even though he had to keep his eyes on the wet road.

He was always able to behave very amiably with Jews, he did not make them feel what he truly thought about their race, and he was especially fond of his own gallantry and generosity.

But his momentary daydreaming, focused on moderate self-admiration, was not without danger.

The hastily applied lipstick on the lady’s mouth, the large amount of rouge and powder, could not conceal the devastations of pain, ice-cold indifference, and constant anxiety but, rather, mocked her.

The driver’s eyes meandered over the woman’s disintegrated features.

In accordance with her upbringing, the passenger considered herself a perfect being, a unique specimen, different in everything and from everyone. She had deflected all doubts about herself, because her upbringing had been perfect, flawless, and that is why she knew how to behave so amazingly well in any situation. Moreover, as the favorite grandchild of Grandpapa Demén, she’d remained a pampered child forever. It was as though the driver, prompted by the map of this strange face, was reciting the lessons of his own life, burdened with much self-aggrandizement.

I never learn anything from anything, he’d sometimes say to himself, and he was very proud of this.

Although there were different emphases in the way these two had been brought up, their tones were similar. They made the same mistakes and notoriously repeated their own errors time after time, since they were convinced that they’d risen above their mistakes and that their high position today was appropriate.

When in the past he had lost his way and began to suspect that he had confused his personal characteristics with his faults, he explained to himself that it was pleasant to stray. He couldn’t tell what he was covering up with which of his rogueries, or what he might have substituted for one of his shams and when. He couldn’t keep track of the consequences either; they burgeoned until he couldn’t help seeing effect as cause.

He accepted his own little frauds and deceptions because they were witness to his cunning and nimbleness. It was not only others he misled; he blundered continually and, one might say, followed flawed premises in his thinking.

He reveled in his own imperfection and attributed no special significance to the flaws in his thought.

To start with, he seemed to know when something was not as it appeared, but he’d give it a name in the interests of using it to succeed in a tactical maneuver. It was like what had happened in his childhood in Mohács in the big pantry of their palace on Városház Street, where he spooned preserved fruit out of the glass jars in such a way that the servants wouldn’t notice the drop in the level of the contents. Yet a small amount was indeed missing from the jar, and the next day the level would fall again, and the next day too, until the preserved fruit nearly disappeared — though probably no one in the household but he was secretly eating it. He liked peaches more but, by way of precaution, ate plums too, because there were more plums than peaches. He guarded his coveted goodness by deceiving himself. He managed to conquer his true desire. Sometimes he’d break a cellophane cover on one jar or disturb the natural skin formed on the surface of the fruit yet leave it untouched while eating stealthily from another jar. He had to manipulate things so that his mother would suspect a gluttonous maid. Or so that one maid would be set against another. He’d steer their suspicions in a given direction by deliberately dropping false hints. On the third day, the broken cellophane or filmy skin could be the pretext for stealing from another jar too. Then at least he could save the dangerously diminished contents of the first jar from his own hateful gluttony. But by then plum compote was missing from two open jars, even though he liked cherry or sour-cherry compote better. Sometimes he’d make whole jars disappear, so that the deficit in one jar wouldn’t be noticed; after he managed to devour the fruit to the last spoonful, shaking with excitement all the while, he buried the evidence in a deep hole in the garden.

It was enjoyable to play with the possibilities, risky; he knew his gluttony was a mortal sin, but he didn’t want to resist temptation completely, he’d give in to it a little, and with excitement and tension thus aroused, he caused much joy to himself. He knew he was a backslider. He did not notice how he combined his secret excitements with fear and trembling, how he intertwined them. He was moving among screens and scenery; illusion and make-believe gained an independent reality.

He had major sins, which he did not confess.

This was the source of his secret joy. And why shouldn’t he allow himself a daring exchange of roles. He’d believed all his life that it was enough to conform to certain behavioral norms to avoid punishment. Well, all right, he can’t avoid his temptations and the quiet punishments that follow, but he can at least avoid public humiliation. Virtually every situation can be mastered; one has only to remain smooth and nimble, gain some time, because everything in this world is transitory, is it not; everything is temporary.

Touch everything only on the surface, just there, do it but do it lightly; do not look into things deeply.

He was way off the mark with this, of course, because he did see deeply into things even if he didn’t want to. He preferred to deny what he saw. It was like denying his silent soul, his better self. He was unable to lose his miserable clear-sightedness.

Duty had brought him to this state, into the thick of it. It was impossible that barely past his fiftieth year he would find nothing but a pile of misery in his soul.

Weltschmerz laid him low; his cheerful disposition kicked helplessly against it.

He was daydreaming about himself, as was his wont, while scrutinizing a strange face.

Yet there had been a few unblemished, glittering moments, hours, days; he consoled himself with this — though he could not think of one right now. Maybe the enormous, timeworn, peeling wall of the Trieste Naval Academy, so thickly overgrown with ivy, and the salty fragrance of the sea breeze suffused with sunshine up on San Vito. He well remembered that sensation, though bitterness blotted out the memory of what had occurred there. He knew what he was remembering, but it no longer had a shape or image, and no participants either. He could also say how many times it had happened to him. Actually, whole hours had been like that, les très riches heures under romantic laurel trees. He seemed to feel around him the texture of their aura heated by the sun, their fragrance; surely there were at least some moments like that. And who knew what one should do to achieve those moments; what should be adjusted to what, and similarly, what should be given a wide berth if these rich hours were indeed acts of grace. There was only one spot in the park, over the roofs, from which one could see down to the bay. And what would he be looking for in a place where grace was meted out. To watch how a white ship swims through the opening. They were not allowed to climb trees; he was standing on tiptoe to see the sunny surface of the water.

And it seemed he had to take a good hard look at the map of devastation and decay in his rearview mirror so that he wouldn’t have to give up his contempt-filled hope. Or at least so he wouldn’t let his contempt for the world be stronger than hope.

Once they were off the bridge and in between the high apartment buildings, the taxi was no longer exposed to the raw, strong squalls, but on Margit Boulevard, now muddy and broken up for road repair, the cobblestones began to shake it, toss it about. Piles of stones and sand towered on either side, pipes and cables were strewn everywhere. The wind whistled, boomed, at times screamed down at them as it swept off the roofs and around the chimneys; the windshield wipers creaked, now smearing, now wiping away the splashing dirt.

The roadway had been dug up, revealing a long, winding wound; supposedly the city had been replacing gas pipes for weeks, but nobody was working at the bottom of the soaked ditches now, and the spring hurricane had toppled all the safety barriers and their paraffin lamps.

If these women don’t understand why he’s dodging them, why he’s let their importunate questions go by, then fine, let them not understand.

Contempt did not show on his face; rather, a pale and indulgent smile crinkled the thick lines around his eyes.

With people of his own rank, he never let himself get into an embarrassing situation in which somebody might inquire about his name. After all, a conversation is not made merely of questions or answers. The purpose of a conversation is to maintain, by musical means as it were, a noncommittal flow of chatter; what could be simpler or clearer than that. While he was driving the car between the gaping ditch and the curb at the first big turn of Margit Boulevard, he grasped the steering wheel firmly with his left hand and reached across the front seat to pick up Lady Erna’s beribboned hat from the ribbed rubber mat where it had fallen.

In the rearview mirror, in less than a second, they mutually traversed the areas around each other’s eyes, replete with wrinkles and shadows.

The driver had well-shaped, full lips; the short-cropped mustache above them, which he had sported since his early youth, was full of shimmering gray bristles.

My son’s name is the same as mine, László, he finally answered reluctantly, and to make his yielding to Lady Erna’s prying a little easier he said it as if letting his words out through his nose.

Nevertheless, his arm made a very strong impression on Lady Erna.

The way he was safely navigating the car across impossible terrain with that backhanded grip on the steering wheel. She did not resist acknowledging the impression. The movement swept even Geerte’s lips out of her memory. Only the feeling coursing through her nervous system kept the recollection alive.

At this moment, she did not understand why she’d been attracted all her life more to the beauty of men. What Geerte’s lips had done to her and what she had done to Geerte was something no other sensual experience could even approach.

The reality of her memory touched the reality of the sight before her.

In a certain sense unfairly, since Geerte and the driver made contact in her consciousness without her gaining any moral insight. This was so beyond anything acceptable that fortunately she could find no words for it. Sometimes, such little things, at times little lapses of memory and short circuits, can make one free.

She clicked her tongue. László, is it, she cried, well, what do you know. She did not let the reluctant man complete his sentence, because she was taken aback and amazed by the unfair contact; that at such an advanced age I should still feel something like this. She shuddered; really wonderful, she cried, to distract her mind from the intimate sensations within her. This is ridiculous; I am ridiculous.

In vain she rifled through the many drawers and cubbyholes of her memory, but among the professor’s favorite students she could not find one named László.

There must be some misunderstanding.

That means his name is the same as that of the charming hero of Casablanca, and to gain some time for her ridiculous sensation she politely leaned forward and laughed amiably, isn’t that right.

To which the driver responded by raising his leather-capped head, self-consciously and demonstratively, as if alarmed; the conversation could not continue like this. He truly did not understand what his passenger was talking about or what she was trying to achieve. What hero, what Casablanca was she talking about, but no matter what, she should not be using this tone.

He was probably disturbed by the secret current within him. It just could not be that without any transition he should suddenly desire this chattering old woman.

I beg your pardon, he responded coldly, though in a tone that was a shade more refined than one might expect from an ordinary cab driver; and to forestall further Jewish impertinence that such a Jewess von Haus aus might permit herself, he very slowly and deliberately returned his look to the rearview mirror.

Gyöngyvér sat sunken into herself, pale and motionless.

When, lounging in each other’s arms, they were startled into wakefulness that morning on the narrow bed in the maid’s room, she could think of nothing else.

No, they were not lounging; rather, they’d held each other tight all night long when she could think of nothing else. Not all night, since she’d slipped back to him only at dawn, when they could hear on the other side of the thin wall the foyer door closing above them, which meant that Mrs. Szemző had come back after all. But she could think of nothing else. The sensation of their own bodies dissolved in the sensation of the other’s body; that was what she was thinking about, and she could not retreat far enough into the corner of the backseat not to feel a similar sensation emanating from the man’s mother, a sensation out of which the man appeared and refused to leave. Even though she was here, in the taxi taking them somewhere, along with all her feelings and sensations. They held on to each other so they wouldn’t roll off the cot or slip out of each other.

She would have loved to do it, just once the good Lord should grant her this, so that Ágó wouldn’t take it out on her.

Never.

This morning, it would have made no sense for them to go on making love.

The sense of desire awakened with them — it always awakens in the man, or anyway is more unequivocal with him — but they could not tell which limb belonged to whom, whether they were feeling and sensing the other’s body or soul, and whether their own spirits had any boundaries.

The current of air kept moving the open window above them as it had throughout the night.

The summer morning breathed on them its coolness filled with birdsong.

Never more beautiful and dangerous.

With her power of imagination she would not accept the notion that that’s not how it should be, that nothing like this can ever happen again; she did not see the never-again standing before them as a gaping abyss, that this would never again happen to them.

She was already falling fast through the endless time of never-again, and she had to get used to the pain, otherwise she couldn’t bear it. She must anneal herself. It cannot be that there will never be mornings like this, never, never.

Each time anew, the image hit her like a blow to her head, this never-again. Not even a year had gone by and it was already over. And when she told herself that her heart would break and her head would split, she did not mean it metaphorically. The veins along the wall of her heart’s aortic arch trembled from this knotty tension of never-again, her skull throbbed with a migraine. Or she told herself that she would forget him.

Never. I will forget him. Never.

The meaning of the sentence was weak, its exhortation strong. Her consciousness was reminding her of the delicate border between physical and mental abilities. That somehow she should release her accumulated fear, regulate it, divert it in other directions, for it was threatening to burst its dam, her sensual energies were ready to rage, and they were naturally linked to blood pressure, pulse, and breathing rhythm.

I was thinking of that partner of the beautiful Ingrid Bergman, Lady Erna continued, literally shouting, which drove the cabbie to further venomous and contemptuous conclusions as he handed her the hat over the front seat.

Lady Erna accepted her hat from this truly congenial and attractive man and, as was her custom, conveniently forgot that only a few minutes before she had thought the same man obnoxious. The most she noticed was that from the time they began to speak more confidentially, the driver stopped using the unpleasant if-you-please-madam phrase, with which these terrible country folk continued to embitter Lady Erna’s life.

They got on her nerves with it.

It had become a maniacal urge with her to hunt it down and eliminate it; she would not suffer it from her own servants; her ears were alerted to it. She firmly believed that it expressed secret contempt, indicated lack of openness and honesty. Whoever worked for her had to learn that no such form of address existed in the Hungarian language.

Or the person could leave; after all, his or her character was bad anyway, probably given to stealing too.

She thanked the driver for the hat, for being so kind.

As the two of them were escaping from the Nazis, from Prague if I remember correctly, she added in the same loud voice, Mister Laszlo or Victor Laszlo, come on, help me, my God, I can’t remember the name of that famous actor.

Unable to do anything else, the driver burst out laughing.

You can imagine I’d help you out, dear lady, if I could only remember it myself.

And like close acquaintances of the same generation, familiar with the same pieces of music and the same movies, which is to say whose memories propose the same information on the first try, they laughed together contentedly.

Which filled Lady Erna with a certain relief, that the man with the leather cap could not possibly be a former Hungarian Nazi or a secret policeman.

When it comes to that, Casablanca is not the worst place in the world, believe me, dear lady. I’ve traveled a lot in my life, he said cheerfully and with not a small amount of self-mockery or self-contempt. Although the second time he used the dear-lady phrase it rang sarcastically on his lips. At this time of the year, in March, everything is in bloom there.

By the way, my name is Bellardi, he added, to end the embarrassing misunderstanding between them.

And as if moved by this mention of his own historic name, he gently combined the two names.

My son is László Bellardi, and of course that’s my name too.

And as he said it he thought irritably, now she’ll know everything and be satisfied, the old Jewess.

Who was dumbstruck, alarmed, as if suddenly reprimanded. Hearing the old familiar name, she grew silent in her soul, and the gravely serious little girl instantly pierced her way through the old woman’s worn and discomposed features. As she was being taken in the familiar buggy to the station along the elm-lined street, in the noise of hoofbeats and the sight of treetops she grasped the entire strange and hostile universe.

Suddenly every possible conversational topic became too delicate to propose, let alone talk about.

If only because of Gyöngyvér, they had to be cautious. Neither of them knew whether she was an informer. Although for long minutes she had ignored what the other two were talking about, things reached her in snatches, interfering with the high, love-induced blood pressure thumping in her ear.

You would be the father of little Bellardi, she said from her corner of the backseat, surprising both her listeners, her voice hoarse and loud.

Very kind of you.

You don’t say, she exclaimed.

She felt an impulse to yield to this chitchat; she probably sensed their distrust.

What a coincidence, she exclaimed.

She ignored Lady Erna’s imploring or rebuking glance.

But then Gyöngyvér feared she had once again done something terrible, behaved improperly.

In the car reeking of stale tobacco, Gyöngyvér’s panic made the mutual caution of the other two all but palpable. The affectionate indulgence they had allowed themselves took on a material quality in the air. What could they do with such a cackling goose, such an ignorant little servant. Bellardi drove attentively, with great practice and courtesy, while Mrs. Lehr, née Erna Demén, politely holding her mill-wheel-size hat on top of her handbag, withdrew from public life, as it were. Gyöngyvér’s noisy behavior irritated her greatly. Knowledge of where they were going in this stinking dark cab with its useless springs unexpectedly came crashing down on her again.

She sat firmly upright, back glued to the seat; with her self-saving posture she resembled Gyöngyvér.

Of course she knew.

She knew a great many things that it would have been better not to know.

Of course she remembered Bellardi’s son; she did not have to strain hard for that. But she hadn’t known that the boy’s name was László. Little Bellardi, or poor little Bellardi. Gyöngyvér was right, that’s how the professor used to refer to him. When she was introduced to people who turned up in their apartment on Teréz Boulevard, she mainly acknowledged their names or their presence. So this was Bellardi. She was surprised. This was the father whom the People’s Tribunal had sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy against the democratic order.* What an impressive neck this Bellardi has. He did not remind her of that person, at least not by his exterior, and that’s why she hadn’t made the connection in her mind. She was amazed. So that’s why his phiz was so eerily familiar. And at that moment she seemed to remember exactly the light summer suit the father had worn in that famous newsreel when, handcuffed and between two guards, he had to step up to the microphone and respond to stern questions put to him by the presiding judge of the People’s Tribunal.

They led him up there as if he were a dog; only there did they take the handcuffs off his wrists.

He must have cut a fine figure in that suit, if I still remember it today.

Of course there are men who never lose their boyish charm.

Actually it was a dispossessed man standing there at the microphone; he held on to it, but the presiding judge quickly warned accused number 3 that it was not the microphone he should hold on to. Because of this reprimand not a peep was heard in the courtroom for a long time, of course. Foreign correspondents in the first rows were especially alarmed. His suit hung on him as on a clothes hanger.

He might get the death sentence.

The person Lady Erna must have been remembering was this robust man, crucified in many ways. But his son was short, quiet, pale, charmingly fragile or rather puny, with no cheerful strength or manly brutality; perhaps he took after his mother. Whom Mrs. Lehr had met twice in Mária Szapáry’s hunting box in Vésztő, at the time it was being liquidated. Once hunters had gone there for small game, coot, wild duck, hare, pheasant, and bustard. Both meetings were brief; on both occasions Lady Erna spoke briefly with the young woman, who seemed to her like a volatile spirit. There was no reason for Erna’s mind to bring together information originating in two different historical times. So it unfortunately never occurred to her that there might be some blood relation between poor little Bellardi, who had belonged to the professor’s circle of favorite students, and the hapless beloved of ugly Mária Szapáry. She should have known that Elisa Koháry was the little boy’s mother. So he was the boy whom she had abandoned when he was only a baby. Although she had returned for a few years because she wanted to be heroic, wanted to overcome her terrible inclination and her maternal irresponsibility. There was no reason to link the two sets of data, stored at two different places and at two different depths. Lady Erna appraised and purchased objets d’art on commission from very wealthy collectors. She managed to include a few valuable items among all sorts of cheap wares and to acquire them for a lump sum that was the usual wholesale price paid for the cheaper items. An activity for which she earned Szapáry’s eternal ire. But who cares what an insignificant costume designer had to say.

That infamous lesbian chased younger women so tastelessly and aggressively that, soon after she returned to Budapest from abroad, she became the terror of young husbands and mothers of daughters. No matter how exciting events may have become between the two women — and no doubt the story had been exaggerated in social circles at different levels of Buda or Pest — they were not in contact and tracked the other’s love life only from a great distance.

The two of them, Erna and Mária, did not even address each other in the familiar form, though they had been students together at the same school.

Miserable harpy.

In the depressing, tense summer weeks following the disclosure of the conspiracy, people could not predict whether Professor Lehr would be only a witness in the proceedings or whether in a matter of days charges would be laid against him. It was impossible to detect the actual interest of each party concerned in the feverish preparations, where the different interests would clash, and where the associates would draw the borders. Whether the Russians would succeed in eliminating the entire secret organization or were intent only on slicing off the tip of the iceberg. How the national conservative wing of the Communist Party would position itself in the new situation. They were not prepared for this catastrophe. For the time being they had to lie low, safely wedged between the once illegal domestic activists, the slowly returning Western emigrants, and the Muscovites, and to become integrated into existing factions without undue gnashing of teeth.

It did not occur to any of them, thanks to the professor’s untiring inventiveness, to seek an understanding alliance — with the Russians, of all people.

Of course, Professor Lehr was powerful enough on his own to remain a mere witness at war-crimes trials. But only after he found a high-ranking supporter among the Russian nationalists — one might say only after he embedded himself in the heart of the enemy, helped in this by the Muscovites, of course, much more wary than he — on the Stefánia, in the garden of the former Park Club, which for a long time served as the Russian field officers’ casino, could he congenially review every detail of the future with the pathologically obese, wheezing lieutenant general as they strolled on the narrow footpaths covered with fine Danubian pebbles. Only then, thanks to the quick intervention of his high-ranking patron, did the professor become a scientific expert witness and advisor for the People’s Tribunal.

These days, many people condemn the professor for his terrible volte-face. Being familiar with his views, they should have understood that this was not betrayal on his part but rather the most recent manifestation of his profound loyalty to Hungary’s cause. If he had worked for the nation in the highest echelons alongside the Germans, why shouldn’t he work for the same cause alongside the Russians. Lady Erna knew of the fateful meeting in the Park Club garden, and neither she nor her husband doubted that the high-ranking patron was the Budapest representative of Russia’s military counterintelligence. That uniformed person, with his gilded epaulettes, red braids, general’s sword, and a great many decorations, had been introduced to her at the premiere of the new production of Fidelio at the Opera House in Budapest in 1947. On that memorable evening Klemperer conducted with especially enchanting dynamics. Luckily the formidable chorus of released prisoners in the last act is replete with tutti and forte. When the prisoners kept coming out of their dim cells toward the light, bidding one another to keep their voices to a whisper and singing what joy it was to breathe freely in the fresh air, to find peace and tranquillity at last, and they would trust God to guard their freedom, several people in the audience were heard sobbing.

Klemperer had to be careful with his dynamics lest sentimentality flood the orchestra pit and the stage. The strong basic structure of Beethoven’s music allows for this; the sobbing and wailing spread, quick as a plague, among the warm bodies. It swept across the audience, glittering with reflected golden lights; it spread and raced ahead like an unstoppable wave hurling its foam skyward.

At this moment, Klemperer thanked his good fortune and his fate for choosing this opera.

But Lady Erna could not have known what price had been paid for that congenial conversation on the Stefánia.

She did know the basis of the negotiation and careful agreement. Excepting only the highest positions, the Russians wanted as few Jewish elements as possible in the Hungarian government, in parliament and in the leadership of the political parties. The directive stated that the people’s democracy of Hungary needed, first of all, activists from the ranks of common people, and the Communist Party should be filled with them too. And they considered Professor Lehr an eminent guarantee that university and academic life would be steered in the desired direction. The laudatory attention the professor later gave to the young man must also have had its explanation in this weighty bargain. The price was like a poison capsule.

Better not to crack it open, just swallow it quickly.

Except that very often Lady Erna had to absorb with her own body the contempt, anger, and hatred surging toward the professor.

It was not enough that she swallow the poison pill, as she had done three times.

And now she was being taken to her husband’s deathbed by a driver whom the professor, true to form, had betrayed or at best left in the lurch for the sake of the great cause. Which fit nicely into the theory of tactical conformity. You have no other choice but to cooperate, to serve the prevailing conqueror willingly, but you must always remain conscious of what you are doing and why.

And when were you freed, if I may ask, she asked a little later, her voice lower than low.

She meant to express compassion and empathy, which had to function as a clear marker, and thus was part of their secret language.

In the spring of ’fifty-five, answered the driver, in the impersonal tones in which it was possible to speak of such matters during the years when prisons were still full of people.

He wanted to reciprocate Lady Erna’s empathy, would have said that it had been six years now, and thus indicate in their secret language that he understood and appreciated her viewpoint, but he had no idea who the young woman was.

Everyone feared informers. And he didn’t want to become too cozy with Jews anyway.

I certainly don’t envy your poor wife for those terrible years, if I may express myself like that, Lady Erna added, filled with genuine empathy and a mite disturbed by his lack of reciprocity.

She caught herself only after she’d said this — that she’d made a mistake, good Lord.

The instant she said it she knew she had committed one of the worst faux pas of her life.

Bellardi did not reply, not because he didn’t know how to respond to such rudeness but as if he hadn’t heard it. Even though from that moment, like a blow to the back of the neck, he was once again afflicted by the scandalous weeks, months, and years he’d spent at the bottom of the well. The state of feverishness and sleeplessness when he could not understand, during either the day or night, how Elisa could have done this to him. And when despite everything sleep managed to overtake him he would shudder and awaken to the question. Why did she do it. There was nothing to understand. How could she have left him. The person to whom he was more devoted than anyone else; he had never, never before or with anyone else; it was no mistake, neither hallucination nor loss of proportion, that actually they had bestowed on each other nothing less than the enjoyment of hell.

It could not have been hallucination, because no trace of happiness was left between them.

But at least the gift of hell’s enjoyment, if his life could provide nothing else.

The situation was intolerable. They both suffered terribly from each other, from their own selves when in the presence of the other. The more they tried not to wound each other, the more infernal the enjoyment became, giving it to each other at the cost of restraining their aversion and suppressing their emotion. They slowed down. As if love’s utmost value, passion, were draining out of their raw desire and pleasure. Mutual tolerance and consideration made it pale and more tender; it slowed down but spread out, flooding everything, and it did not cease or grow calm.

As if in place of passion they had reached the combustible matter slumbering at the very bottom of their minds, as if they had touched the body’s glowing magma.

How could she have left him.

They did torture each other all right, but they would have been hard put to find two other people with the same perseverance, strength, and irrepressible liveliness whom they could have tortured.

Elisa’s new whim seemed to be that she had left him and that was that; now she needed love to cling to, to the end. As if the female called Mária Szapáry did not even exist and Elisa had merely invented her so that she could torture him the more.

He did not understand it, though he did comprehend it.

She had thrown him into an unknown circle of hell so they could live through the very depth of the relationship they were now going to lose forever.

Much as if he had to undergo a final or great test simply in order to fail it.

Earlier on, one of them had to escape, now he, now she, so that both could gather strength and return.

How could he have thought that she’d left him or could have left him.

Or what would have weakened their mutual attachment. Did that terrible female know more about Elisa than he did; what was it that she knew, and what were the two of them doing at this very moment. He could see before him what they were doing. Although he was not curious to know, did not want to see it, could not escape it, with every fiber of his muscles he experienced what they were doing. And he trampled himself so deeply into pain that his loss was greater than death; from lack of pleasure and from pain he grew ill, feverish, shaking with a permanent fever, and his illness so sensitized him that his clear-sightedness was no mere delusion presumably.

Clear-sightedness struck him like lightning.

He had considered it but did not know when it would fell him.

It came upon him, and then he knew what was happening between them, and what the end of everything would be like; he did not have to see it to feel it and experience it. Here he is, sobbing, knocking himself against the floor and howling with his head swaying, so he won’t have to see what he can’t see anyway; won’t have to think about it, look at it with his eyes wide open, sense it in his testicles, in the roots of his hair, on the aching skin of the soles of his feet, in the hollow spaces of his penis, in his tumescence; but whatever happens he must remain silent so that their little boy won’t notice anything and won’t awaken from his sweet dreams.

The pleasure the two women were giving to each other now appeared as a physical sensation.

Because he patterned what he was imagining on what happened between him and his wife only weeks earlier when in their pain and prompted by their pain they had enjoyed each other. What was peculiar was that now he felt it very differently, in a way he couldn’t have imagined before. There was no such reality in his sensual experiences or there could not have been such reserves.

After a while he could not help thinking that he was experiencing not his own nervous fits but the women’s attacks; after all, he wasn’t seeing what he felt. Thrusts were coming from outside like gusts of wind; his ability to experience them was absent from his imagination, and the two women were doing this to him deliberately. Elisa was torturing him from the outside. Indeed, she could have had no greater revenge. With their bodies stuck together and trembling with happiness, they were sending Morse signals, would waken him deliberately when he finally managed to doze off, magnetize him with their mutual bodily reality and irradiate him with their happiness.

He must realize he could expect nothing from Elisa anymore; the two of them had become one, and they used this to torture him because his unhappiness made them enjoy each other even more.

Time became endless during those weeks. He could not interrupt it by sleeping; at best a sedative helped a little, but there was no starting anew, he kept shaking with exhaustion, became greatly agitated. His testicles had swollen to worrisome proportions and become ruddy, which he found especially disgusting in himself. He averted his face from the sight as if nature were slapping him in the face with this prank. He was so disgusted with his own corporeality and with his blinded sensual excitements that he stayed dressed even at night to avoid having to see his body; he would not wash up to avoid touching it. Elisa had a bone-handled, gilded pair of scissors in the bathroom. Mesmerized, he looked at it for a long time. But he wanted to save himself from this, if only because of his little boy; not to let blood spurt, not to let the boy find him like that.

He did not go to confession, even though he wanted to be free of the shame and degradation, no matter how high the price.

He felt that he could hardly restrain his own hand. When he writhed on the parquet floor of the living room, glowing in sunshine or lamplight, he saw himself from the outside, silently, as if he were an epileptic.

He had nothing to live for.

Silently, whimpering, occasionally whining.

Yet the next day he might shower normally, wash the bulb of his penis, stinking under the foreskin from the continuous erections, and with nothing woeful in his face he would go to Vienna, knock off another five days of service on the Carolina. He pleaded with God but could not pray to him; he called on that goddamn God, though he knew that something else, not the scissors, not self-mutilation, not self-punishment, but only one thing would satisfy him.

Only murder.

He was very cautious, he did not go to confession and did not go near a church. Lest Jesus Christ or the saints or Mary or the Franciscans get involved. He knew there was another, incomprehensibly sober and mendacious life that his church supported. He had fallen out of it, out of this sober and mendacious world, but because of his little boy he would have to force himself back into it. He did not go to his confessor because he did not want to be diverted. To take his coat, not to stay here as they irradiated him with their happiness, that’s what he wanted, to go when they rushed at him with their pleasure, to break down the apartment door on them and bump them off in their great, noisy happiness like two mad dogs.

By the time his muscles tired of the rhythmic spasms, his completely purposeless and disgusting erection had become so strong and painful that he had to free himself of it somehow.

If he had to touch it with his hand, he would have vomited.

But after a while, even without a sedative, his limbs relaxed with fatigue, his enormous arms and thighs as well as his furrowed features. These parts of his body had to rest for a while to preserve the pain. He lay stiffly, like an uprooted tree. He breathed loudly so he wouldn’t shout even more loudly. Actually, he could not hear his own rhythmic howls. His consciousness still had a clean spot in which he could comprehend the lovely entirety of his existence. He was so dehydrated that he had no more saliva, snot, or tears. And still he had no answer to the question why Elisa had done this to him.

But then they irradiated him again; with their bright rapture they alerted his muscles; he thirsted to know what the two of them were doing at that moment, together, against him, as they immersed themselves in each other’s wickedness and milked the last drop of enjoyment from it.

Without me, without me.

He was howling, writhing silently on the floor because they had shut him out of their wickedness, or because he should turn against himself with his own wickedness. The damned parquet floor creaked in his ears with the shared rhythm of their wickedness, their lovemaking — in which he was Mária Szapáry, so he would not have to abandon Elisa. On the floor, he lived through Mária Szapáry’s experience with Elisa, like animals; then he sobbed dryly when he noticed that for some minutes his little boy had been standing in the doorway in his nightshirt, startled awake; he had awakened the boy with his awful condition.

The boy had been watching him with wide-eyed amazement and dread.

If this little boy dares ask again, if he once again opens his mouth and begins his nerve-racking wails, where is his mother, why doesn’t his mother come home, then he’ll kill him. Tear him apart, rip him to pieces with his teeth. It would be best to kill him right away. The little boy knew, his father’s lies notwithstanding. Or it had been useless to tell him the truth, the whole truth, so as not to beat around the bush. The boy did not believe him, did not listen to him, only waited for his mother to return. Just as these horrible women would not let him rest — Szapáry virtually possessed him, dwelt in him — now the two of them had spun him around and his little boy crawled into him, dwelt in his flesh.

He had to see what the little boy would do; he knew, knew everything but also deceived himself.

These days, he and the little boy were like flesh within flesh, like perfect emotional mirror images of each other.

If he stayed a father, he would most certainly kill him, cut him down, so he wouldn’t have to see him and would leave no witness alive, but he had a secret compulsion to metamorphose into a mother for the little boy’s future.

The pleasure that the two women bestowed on each other not only kept his consciousness awake but also alerted his last humane reserves, for their pleasure had grown much larger than his passionate suffering.

He did not know that one could suffer even in a brief, induced slumber.

For that reason alone he had to put an end to this.

He did have a pistol.

But first he would kill them.

And even before that, he wanted to tell Madzar the whole terrible story, from the beginning almost to the very end, leaving out what he was preparing to do lest Lojzi try to hold him back by force; he would not have that.

So that nobody besides him in this fucking world would ever know about it.

He’s the only one I’ve got left.

And this too was not a coincidence; it had to be a secret signal or otherworldly hint that, after so many years and so completely unexpectedly, Madzar was standing before him on the deck of the Carolina, exuding confidence. But of course he’s on his way to America. When he is most needed. How can he be stopped. And then he did not tell him, did not even begin to, because he found no connecting path or witty turn of phrase from their own heavy and worrisome present situation, no opening sentence for his story. And on the next occasion, when again Madzar appeared on the deck or they arrived together, when he had the table set in the command salon and they sat opposite each other in the fluttering candlelight, he blessed his former distrust which had made him not tell the story.

Suddenly he realized there was no living language in which he could tell it to this reticent, vigorous, strong man. He had no one left. Every feeling proved to be an illusion. It would have felt great to squeal on Elisa to this bullheaded man. To spill every one of her filthy little secrets, their infernal happiness, the disgust he felt for her, the hatred and contempt. To tell him that already on their honeymoon in Alexandria he had cheated on Elisa. All he had to do was cross the poorly lit Corniche, with the uniform noise of the waves, and grope his way down a dark, urine-smelling set of stairs.

If he told this story to Madzar, he would have used up the last remaining bit of love or illusion that he and Madzar retained from their childhood or perhaps could not abandon.

It did not help to take an inventory of his acquaintances, lovers, and all the people who had abandoned him. Or those whom he had abandoned, even though they loved him or he loved them; he found no one among them. And in that case, he could not vomit up all the human beauty and all the human filth onto someone’s feet, it would be impossible.

All in vain, it was all in vain.

It would probably be better, morally more correct too, to kill his sleeping little boy first and then do away with himself.

But he could barely catch his breath, saying, well, I’ve calmed down a little and at least half a year has gone by, it’s time for me to accept that she didn’t leave on a whim and will soon be back, but that she’s left for good, she’s gone.

And on top of it all, here is the bright, sunny, life-filled sensation of a horrible summer morning. As he stands in the living room of their apartment with the telephone in his hand, and does not understand.

Bygone seconds were passing.

But he does not understand what Mária Szapáry, at the other end of the line, is saying, what sort of clinic she is talking about. On such an ordinary Sunday morning.

Then she finished what she had to say; there was silence on the line.

Fate had taken its revenge on the women; their fucking fate screwed them but good.

So what had happened, and what was he supposed to do. Revenge had been taken for everything done to him and to his little boy, and it was very nice of fate to have done this, it was wonderful. Life was worth living after all, because there was such a thing as revenge, and God has given us murder as our freedom.

And then he was saved, at least.

At last, at last.

Summoned by Szapáry’s telephone call, now he was mindlessly racing with his car up and down the empty, freshly watered Sunday-morning streets and roads. In his confusion — at once disgraceful happiness and uplifting dread — he felt the breath of freedom on his skin, and he lost his way a number of times before he reached the neurological clinic.

Let it end, if it has come to its end.

Or it shouldn’t depend on him, though everything is already lost. He knew it; he knew what would happen, though his revenge was sweet. There was no hope that one fine day Elisa would return with her little suitcase. Yet she looks at him with her innocently open and indifferent visage as if nothing has happened for more than half a year.

Why must he still love this horrid being so much.

Or why must revenge taste as sweet as honey.

Why does he love this human creature, lacking every moral standard, so much that he can’t give up hope even at the penultimate moment.

She comes back to torture him even more.

He could no longer cherish even this little hope.

There will be no new beginning, there is no such luck, only pure disaster prevails on earth, and everything is lost.

I’ve put my foot in it again.

Lady Erna did not know exactly what she had put her foot in, but she felt in the stiff silence that she had.

Actually, she had a high opinion of her own heft, including her sturdy feet.

And even if she knew what she had done there was no reason to blame her for anything. To her overweening self, the decent Bellardi boy was not an independent figure whose fate one spends time thinking about and possibly even identifying with a bit. He simply belonged to the populous team of young men who performed certain personal and scientific services for Dr. Lehr. They too were considered devotees of tactical conformity. Following the professor’s instruction, they zealously studied the source, the works of Baltasar Gracián. They translated him from the Spanish or Latin originals, from French and German, or made extracts from his writings based on the old texts. They jotted down and then typed out multiple copies of Professor Lehr’s relevant comments. They compiled small catechisms from the original and not easily understood texts of El Discreto, putting them side by side with Dr. Lehr’s aphoristic notes. And as happens with other copied and commentated literature, after a certain time one could not exactly tell where the Gracián text ended and the Lehr interpretation began. At any rate, adages were born from sentences such as, few manage to avoid the guile of Fortuna, or, thus great fortunes usually end in ignominy.

The squeezed-out blood orange too is turned out of the golden bowl and thrown in the garbage can.

Most of the students had never seen a blood orange, let alone a golden bowl.

They too saw no option except tactical conformity, and that is why they understood the pretty simile in their own ways.

They had to know what was useful or useless for the secret movement, what they should cherish in their private lives and what in their social life, what they should carefully nurture and what they should discard, uproot, weed out, trample on, and throw in the garbage.

They should have no scruples. If necessary, they should exploit anyone; squeeze the last drop of talent out of anyone, as they would the juice from a blood orange. The apparent selfishness and possible ruthlessness of their decisions should not disturb their moral sensibility. Fool and deceive anyone they needed to deceive. It is through the students, by the work of their hands, through their collaboration or, in given cases, through assassinations or murders committed by them, that the collectivity of the race will save what can be saved.

The fate and existence of entire generations are at stake when they make their decisions and act according to the selfish interests of the Hungarian people.

Should not let go of and never harm the holy bond.

And they should not act the same way all the time; they must occasionally confuse their antagonists and enemies.

It’s easy to hit the bird flying in a straight line, but not the one that flips over in flight, that makes unexpected turns.

A good card player never plays the card his rival expects, and definitely not the one that would help his rival win.

Unless Dr. Lehr wished it otherwise, his wife, Lady Erna, too, conformed to the feudal system of relationships. She never asked the professor about matters that were not her business. She did not spend time with his young men, because she kept a strict distance from the perfidious power-related intrigues of the professor’s hangers-on. She minded her own business. They both knew that these intrigues were unavoidable, and they could not mention them even between themselves and not even scornfully; they had to remain above it all, they had to use and exploit the group’s inner conflicts imperceptibly or mete out justice among the insurgents. Pretty girls or attractive women could not be mixed up with the hangers-on, because only males were members of this secret society, which was more than enough for her own security.

But she did not let down her guard.

On his part, the professor saw to it that he acquired permanent or occasional lovers from places where no one had any connection with his university or the academic world. This was not difficult, since commonness was his weakness; classical promiscuity, things dirty, the darkest obscenity, held his senses in thrall, everything beyond the range of legitimate social life.

He struggled valiantly with himself all his life; he wanted to conquer his weakness or at least clean it up a little, if only because for long decades the pure, spiritualized manly life was both his ideal and his hobbyhorse.

At least the need for cleanliness, if not cleanliness itself. Life, conceived in blood and ending in darkness, must seek light and cleanliness, as Gracián would say, it cannot do otherwise.

However, Dr. Lehr simply loved everything that was nasty and hideous. He could not resist loving everything that was filthy, dark, base, treacherous, soiled, and vulgar. Of course, he dismissed the theory of instinctual life.

Jewish idiocy.

But he valued very simple copulations, which he believed were inherent and which most emphatically confirmed life. He loved that; there was no other way to put it. He pitted Jewish libido against a theory of innate copulation. Biological and racial conceptions stood behind this theory, which he spoke about to his students in detail. Who could consider it accidental that Jews preoccupied themselves with their instinctual life so as to guide the world along the alleged libido of that life. He did not elaborate on the nature of inherent copulation with his students; they all probably knew what they were supposed to think about, what natural theory.

True, he did toy with it in a different register, the way, let us say, he loved his wife. Whom he treated with great courtesy and appreciation.

But what could he do if he loved unsought-for copulation, he loved its inherency, and therefore he had to immerse himself in it again and again. He submerged himself, but he loved not knowing the names of these women. To know nothing, to be not curious about them; it would disturb him if he did. Sometimes he didn’t even see their genitalia or faces.

At most, he might feel a sharp elbow in his stomach. He would be groping and pawing under unwashed sweaters and blouses reeking with sweat; the breath of the lower classes would touch him, the smell of onions and carious teeth.

But there’s no need to fear this, because the impersonal feeling of orgasm quickly overwhelms sensations that are imbued with social ideas.

Besides the memory of their being unwashed, nothing remained of their persons.

I’ll go out for a spell, my darling.

Go on, my sweet.

For a little walk, with your permission.

You move frightfully little as it is.

On evenings like this, he simply had to get up from his desk.

I’ll air out my head a bit, he would say to himself on evenings when he could no longer resist the temptation or suppress his darkly gaping proclivity. It was not that raw, physical signals reminded him of his desires, no, there were no such signals. Rather, he feared the consequences of such an outing and therefore felt completely devoid of desire. But he could not resist an indefinable mental attraction, a sort of barbarian inclination. And he knew this was a pagan, mystic attraction, a primordial one, an archaic proclivity.

Symptoms of his inclination were reinforced during the previous week, or perhaps symptoms from previous millennia signaled their permanence in him by suggesting that he could do it with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

They signaled to him and he followed them. He could not have known — and this was the essence of this intimate pagan attraction — what drew him on in the night, why he did not even try to understand why he should go and where; he should simply go as if under a magic spell.

He had to set out in a night filled with unknown dangers, to follow nothing but the call of the blood pumping from his heart, its restless beating, to surrender himself, defying all danger, to the primal forces of an unknown, natural godhead. He had to be swift and inventive. The mere thought filled him with strength and charged his cool, passionless spirit. Sometimes he would not give in to the call for days, fearing that his passion would devour him whole. He could not stay out longer than an hour and a half. And he could not think he was alone with his pagan sin and enjoyment in this city, because at different secret points it turned the reality of its other parts upside down. He didn’t need more time. He knew these places and saw what he saw in the motionless city night.

Besides, he could not take more without giving in to contempt and disgust.

Dr. Lehr was a man of the old school, a spiritually demanding real gentleman, and Lady Erna especially appreciated his refined sense of discretion. No matter how much she suffered because of these little anthropological sallies, which always left small innocent traces, she both respected his need for them and found an explanation for them. Any of those traces could have exposed him, yet she thought it better not to mention them. She knew well that scientific activity had strictly confidential strands and currents that might lead to very dangerous political illegality, and she accused herself in her infernal jealousy of mixing up these strands. While in her feverish imagination her husband was chasing some unseemly female, he in fact had to attend a conspiratorial meeting. Instead of making unfair accusations, she should worry if he forgot to take his hat or scarf, and she should consider his brief absences part of his academic work.

Even though she saw mud on the heels of his shoes in dry weather.

Occasionally, Lehr wound up at the City Park lake, where human traffic was intense under the plane trees. That is where he met the greatest inherent love of his life, to whom his memory continued to return with an unquenchable thirst. As they cautiously approached each other in the alternately stronger and dimmer lights from the gas lamps on the promenade, uncertainty gripped him. Perhaps the figure coming nearer was not a shapely woman but an effeminate man. He had to be careful about that in the darkness; it could turn dangerous. There were places in the city where the boundaries of areas favored by different sexual preferences were uncertain or simply overlapped and merged. But uncertainty did not halt the steps of either of them. Professor Lehr carefully avoided places that had lost their borders. Anyway, the figure brought with it the sound of swishing feminine clothes and was dangling something in its hands. He saw that she was barefoot, which made his heart beat in his throat, a sign at once of joy and dread; obviously, she’d taken off her high-heeled sandals on the mowed lawn. Above their heads the leaves of the plane trees rustled quietly in the silent night.

They both behaved erratically in the dark.

Farther off, other human shadows could be seen approaching and then receding. First the two of them would observe each other, retreat a little to observe again and gauge the other’s interest from a distance — that was the accepted safe thing to do at places like this — and then, estimating the degree of danger, approach each other again.

But that is not what happened.

They both stopped and the young woman unhesitatingly dropped her shoes. The shoes landed silently. On the morning of the day this happened, he had given his first talk as an appointed expert at the People’s Tribunal. That is why he behaved so bravely at night. This was the phase of the attack—la petite troupe fut attaquée par surprises, as he described it to his most trusted students — which allowed him to consider that his work as an expert in the courtroom was not a tactical betrayal. There was no doubt that the figure was a young woman wearing waterproofed silk overalls, which might for a few seconds have made her seem like a man; and it was beyond doubt that she was insane.

He had never seen such innate, inherent agitation, the strength of which his mind could not follow.

Mechanics in the American air force wear overalls like this.

During the one moment when he could not possibly know what was or might be happening to them, what her hands were or might be doing, the young woman with one decisive gesture unzipped the zipper that ran diagonally down the overalls. He heard the metallic susurration. Stark naked from her neck to her pubic hair, she whimpered with expectation. An insane nymph, a pagan priestess. Never had he a more convincing body in his hands. Never had all accompanying thoughts so completely melted away.

Only much later did he manage to recall everything that happened between them, because right afterward he was too busy trying to sober up from the experience as he staggered home.

For months he kept going back, until in the late autumn a verdict was reached in court, but he never found the insane nymph again.

He should have been pleased, because although accused number 1 and number 2 were condemned to death, he managed to yank accused number 3 from under the gallows.

He could never make up the enormous loss, which also made a sensitive dent in his theory of copulation, though he remembered her face, the texture of her skin, her eyes, and the incredibly rich pubic hair. He was compelled to remember every personal thing that he now missed, and missing them was not possible without lasting pain.

Libido is inseparable from a person, and therefore the Jew rightly holds it to be the cornerstone of individuality, he pronounced at the end to his students. To realize his aspirations for world domination, he must not only destroy the nation but also break down human society into its individual parts. As opposed to this, in inherent copulation each individual experiences the communality that characterizes us all — even the Jew, strangely enough. In inherent copulation the communal overrides the individual, as it were.

He did not understand why he could not find the insane young priestess anymore.

It did not matter that he found others.

Lady Erna discovered the smeared green of grass on the elbows of his jackets and the knees of his pants. She also noticed sticky filth clinging to his fine wool overcoats and to the velour or rabbit fur of his hats.

In the years after the war, the city at night was full of great dangers.

She always found some kind of grayish fuzz that reminded her of cobwebs. She did not understand this, because in her great jealousy she thought about the things she and her husband did together, which weren’t to be sneezed at, and embellished and colored them a bit in her imagination, to make it hurt. Let it hurt, and may her jealousy perish in the pain. But she could never have imagined that the famous professor, object of both general esteem and public obloquy, was driven by a passion of an entirely different nature, which lured him to danger, to abandoned promenades and strange attics, which pulled him into dark doorways where it would happen amid filled garbage cans, while he trembled with the insane urgency and risk, and that this was the only way it could happen, in a state of impersonal excitement brought on by a childlike fear of punishment and a sinful desire for union.

Not to mention wafts of smells and odors that one simply could not have in a well-cared-for apartment.

She dismissed the scandalous odors by thinking she’d gone mad, but she couldn’t go mad. And she couldn’t go around smelling her husband’s underclothes. But she did, and frequently too, for the smells always caught her unprepared. And then she would acknowledge with considerable relief that her husband had stepped in dog shit or human shit.

It could not be that his own shit was smeared on his underpants.

It’s not possible, István, that you went in your pants.

That would surprise me too.

There was no scientific career that could exist without secret, rather dubious human relationships; also, generally speaking, there was no such science.

Still, with her imagination bordering on hysteria, Erna sometimes so upset herself that she would have preferred screaming to having knowledge and understanding.

I can’t bear it.

The things I keep imagining.

But what if I can’t endure this very hour.

I can’t endure an entire life like this. What hell hasn’t this accursed man thrown me into.

She was unable not to love him and want him; the thought made her loins ache. She had piercing pains in her ovaries and she could not understand her longing after so many years. Soon I’ll be an old lady, so why is my body doing this to me. I’d rather perish. Why are you punishing me like this, Almighty God, why are you humiliating me. Even though she did not believe in any divinity; humbug, she could not believe in anything or anybody. We are born, we suffer, and then we perish. C’est tout. Therefore, all her life she thought that a body, her own, had to be given its satisfaction occasionally, and that should take care of this whole frivolous business.

She saw it on her son, she saw it on the two good-for-nothing friends of her son, what her husband had been doing behind her back, and what these good-looking filthy men were doing to poor women. There is not one among them, not one, she could call a human being; there are no exceptions, they are all animals. It was the exceptions that repelled her most because they were the loudest — the murderers, the possessed, the Arrow Cross men, the priests, the psychologists, and the party chiefs.

I must be paranoid, mentally ill; I’m exaggerating, taking things too much to heart.

She could not help noticing that these men did not extricate themselves from one affair before becoming entangled in another. She could not help noticing that they did not bother to keep their disgusting little affairs separate, and, what’s more, shoved and pushed one another around in the fray, with their softer or louder show-off challenges. They thrive in a single large body. These men are not persons but rather identical bundles of impulses that must, in as large a circle as possible and as abundantly as possible, spew forth their sperm.

All this hugely disgusted her and filled her with furious envy.

She positively approved that her son was doing this, at least.

A good thing too that he’s not tying himself down forever to a goose like this Gyöngyvér.

These men, with their single body, simultaneously tempt and deceive all women.

And this woman is really a shapely bitch, nothing more.

What more should her son do with her; at most, he could pass her on to another man so that he too could empty his sperm into her. These rotten men consider women to be nothing but vessels into which to empty their sperm.

Here I go with my eternal Jewish accusations, as my dear István would say.

Instead of defending this birdbrained little Gyöngyvér, this wretched little foundling, against my damned son.

It will overwhelm me, I will drown in my own malice, but what can I do if I hate every one of them; and indeed she hated all women. And that’s also the women’s fault, my mother’s fault; I left Geerte only because, thanks to my mother, I loathe every woman.

And since she loathed every woman, she tended, with some relish, to despise herself.

I did not trust her, I couldn’t trust her, because somehow I did not think it natural that someone should be a woman. What need is there for different sexes in the world, anyway. And in time, there must have been something of the mentally ill in her, because she began to see how she turned her own son into a misogynist, how she imbued him with her own hatred for and aversion to the sexes.

And when her husband infected her, once mildly, once more seriously, and once, to her great astonishment, with crabs, she remained silent, mute, made not a peep, merely endured it. After having consulted her physician, who sent for additional tests even though he had no doubts about the diagnosis and treatment, she merely remarked at the breakfast table that the professor would do well to seek the help of a dermatologist.

To which the man, from the far end of the table, with a single elegant flick of his wrist replied that he had already done that and everything would soon be all right.

I hope you didn’t go to see Szemző.

Dear Erna, you should know me by now, you’ve never had reason to complain about my tact or courtesy.

But why didn’t you warn me, István, she asked him without any recognizable sign of rebuke; she was genuinely curious.

She wanted to understand the man, to see whether their entire life had not been a sheer misunderstanding. Truly to understand, just once, what the other was thinking. Perhaps to understand him now, at this particularly difficult moment.

No, no, answered the man with buttered toast in his hand, from which, as usual, honey dripped onto the tablecloth.

Which, of course, had been changed only that morning and which, because of her husband’s absentmindedness, they would have to change again right after breakfast.

I’m the one who must thank you for your advice, Erna, for your fairness and understanding, Erna, for your kindness.

You are teasing me, István.

You know I am not; you must know that you cast a golden glow on my life. Vous avez pour moi un coeur d’or, ma petite.

My one and only, Erna whispered in response, her eyes swimming with tears.

I worship you, whispered the man, and neither of them moved from the table.

Which is to say that neither of them left his or her half of it.

From which, of course, Erna understood what she already knew: that once again she had dared to come much too close to the man and would have to back off. Something inexplicable and unavoidable was happening in this creature shaped like a man, though not a very spectacular one, whom she despises and loves; and now she might be carrying one of his painful diseases too. In other words, she could not avoid what was happening in the man until she understood him, and by then it might be too late. If fate had inflicted on her this strange, slightly paunchy man, with his narrow bony shoulders, pathologically concave chest, too large hands, thick thighs, and too big head, then this is how things must be. From which it follows logically that, along with him, she had accepted insanity.

He is a leech. And she did not yet allow herself to think of their little girl, who had been killed by the deliberate negligence of this human wild boar, this coyote, this polecat, this eel.

And she did not think of her son either.

But how could she not think about them.

She was living with two men, living under the same roof with two common criminals. In the building that her adored, handsome grandfather had built and left to her. He must not have been very different from these two, she could not help thinking, maybe even meaner than they. But this is what a solid bourgeois upbringing is supposed to do, help one to gauge, understand, and accept every circumstance and situation and then, armed with this knowledge, to resist chaos. Yet occasionally she felt she’d collapse under the spiritual and moral weight of it, which was far greater than her load-bearing capacity. But she never talked of this with anyone. More correctly, it never occurred to her that she could in fact speak to anyone about the peculiarly muddled organizational and economic aspects of her life.

Had I stayed in Venlo with Geerte, I’d have had another, I don’t know what kind of life.

However, couples leading lives similar to theirs, in high social positions, discussed mental problems, concerns about their emotional lives, or even strictly professional matters only when they touched directly on the family’s existence. Similarly, they did not chat about their household problems or daily routines from the standpoint of their emotional lives. Lady Erna had to solve such problems alone, because her husband was weighed down with his scientific work, his correspondence, the required and recommended reading of texts that towered in piles all over the apartment, his public life with its labyrinths and complications, the obligations that went with his official duties, his travels, and his lectures. Their lives were measured out to the hour and minute, which meant spotless shirts that could be changed at a moment’s notice, ties and suits sent to and delivered from the dry cleaner, vests, overcoats, and fur coats, but also rugs, table linen, curtains, and tableware — she had to see to the maintenance of all this. The brass door handles and brass ornaments had to shine brilliantly and at least once every two months the silver dinner set, along with all its accessories, had to be polished. This meant a house where unexpected guests could be welcomed at any time with the greatest reverence, and the same for guests formally invited to dinner. Or where hungry students were to be given used clothing and stuffed with slices of bread spread with goose fat or crunchy goose crackling, scallions, and salted black radish.

Who would not have wanted to break free of this yoke, this terrible treadmill of obligations, at least once a week.

When, of an evening, the professor would suddenly stand up from the table, and this happened at least once or twice a month, and reach not for a bottle of his favorite Hungarian wine, egri leányka or soproni kékfrankos or szekszárdi bikavér, but, having shed his corduroy housecoat for his jacket and hat and, after breathing a gentle kiss on his wife’s tastefully bejeweled hand, leave the apartment and step out on the boulevard, he had a choice of several places to go. The nearest beer hall was in Király Street, but because of its proximity, it could be the most dangerous. The simplest solution was to walk toward Lövölde Square, at the corner of which was a very dark, in the strictest sense of the word barely illuminated, and stinking bar, a plain drinking place with an oily floor, which in Budapest argot was called a stand-up bar, consisting of two enormous rooms that opened into each other; they were always jammed. There, while nursing a red-wine spritzer, the professor could almost always pick out and then quickly pick up a female who suited him. He loved the women here, in the condition they were in, to the point of adoration, though undoubtedly he did not love their persons, not their inner characteristics and not even their pitiful bodies. Lost petit-bourgeois women sunk to the bottom of alcoholism, or bitter proletarian ones filled with brutality. Who did not want anything but a drink. Or, at most, hoped he wouldn’t hit or pummel them but either stroke them or leave them in peace. They were grateful for his stroking, which never ended in the usual brutality; after all, he loved them, each one of them individually. They were so pleased with the refined manners of this peculiar man, with his pleasant smell and with his fee arranged in advance, that they would cling to him, hang on to him, until they reached the next doorway or cluster of bushes, and they never remained dry.

For a twenty-forint bill, they took care of everything very quickly. They were grateful to providence that they could be done with everything so fast and with such a fine gentleman to boot.

If he wanted a higher-quality woman, which happened rarely, a more artful and more sophisticated one, someone in theory more suitable to his social standing, then he continued along the former Queen Vilma Road, under the chestnut trees, to the Moszkva Bar, where once Hedda Hiller used to sing her bittersweet chansons. Love again, always that damned love, again and again. And if he wished to sink as deep as possible into filth, then he could just walk on the boulevard to the Ilkovics. Here he could find whores riddled with nicotine and alcohol, looking worse than ghosts; this was the pits, rock bottom. They never gave hints concerning their origin or condition; at most, they complained or cursed. He could thank these creatures sunk in the swamps of the city for his strongest erections and most elaborate orgasms. Around the railway stations, things were neither clean nor danger-free. Here he could be mugged or knocked out, and he might also run into unemployed, dissolute former colleagues who came to this part of town to warm themselves or have a helping of boiled kale without meat for one forint and forty fillérs.

Out of mercy, the servers would splash some onion sauce on the kale.

Bellardi’s son, who also frequented this place to have kale and watch the whores, had a special ability to remain unseen.

Only Gyöngyvér noticed him.

Every time they ran into each other in the spacious hallway of the Lehrs’ apartment on Teréz Boulevard, by chance, as it were, they caught each other’s eyes and found it hard to let go. While they exchanged a few noncommittal words, they openly and shamelessly gauged each other’s mental and erotic abilities. Bellardi looked deceptively like a little boy, but his gaze and scrutiny made the woman, older than he, gasp for breath and shudder. One of them would be coming, the other going; sometimes Ilona was also there, standing between them to let one of them out and the other one in. This did not keep them from continuing their shameless game.

And one could not claim that between their meetings Gyöngyvér did not daydream about the young man in the personal service of the professor. Who continued to come to the house to correct proofs of the professor’s latest articles and arrange books and papers, even weeks after the professor had gone to the hospital on Kútvölgyi Road.

Gyöngyvér was taken by the suppleness and energy of the frail small body; in her imagination, she contemplated the weight of a feather and the manliness of a reed. I could blow this little boy away like blowing out a candle, like a feather, my voice would make him fly away. I’ll swallow him whole, I’ll suck him like candy, she wanted to say to herself, and she felt the boy, soaked sopping wet with her saliva, along with his innards melting all over her tongue; but his severe look pierced her brain and stopped her imaginings.

Jesus, he can see right into me.

A lunatic, a madman; I shouldn’t start with him, she said to herself, ordering herself to be cautious.

She was afraid of him, yet she longed for the fears and risks of meeting him again. She could not give up wishing this. The boy’s slender childlike body stood at a generous distance from Ágost’s physical attributes. And she began to weave plans to free herself from the monster with as little pain as possible. The monster whom she couldn’t live without. But he was too heavy for her, at least two sizes too big for her, destroying and crushing everything. She would prefer a sweet little child like this, whom she could play with and on whom everything looks sweet and nice.

The young males orbiting around Professor Lehr were in close contact with Ilona. Most of the time it was she who answered the telephone and went to the door when they rang the bell; in her simple way, she judged correctly when she should take the telephone to the professor’s bed, when to deny some calls, and whose messages to put on ice. Although she had never heard of the scientific questions his work was concerned with, she could judge what service or professional connection the famous professor needed, and whose service might further increase the professor’s prestige.

From the time his illness kept the professor in bed and his mental state kept him from appearing in public, Ilona acted as his private secretary. Everyone tried to keep away his actual secretary, a very ambitious and exceedingly nervous woman named Kati Geyer, who had come from the Communist Youth Movement and everyone knew worked for the state security services.

There was no reason to fear her, because for her the weakened professor’s case was closed. Kati Geyer was interested only in people who were in some way important to her career. She came to the apartment to help with the professor’s correspondence and to have the necessary allocations and departmental orders signed.

Ilona learned her role well, and she got along better than Lady Erna did with this impossible sniggering female, who was always shaking her dyed mane, if only because they were both from the country.

And Ilona was particularly keen on ensuring that signs of the professor’s occasional loss or lapses of memory were noticed as little as possible. She arranged visits for the days and hours during which the professor could still show something of his immense knowledge, far-reaching interests, and engaging affability. Lapses of memory have their own strict regularities, of course, but like the feeling of helpless falling in a dream, they are incomprehensible and interminable. Periods of slow improvement would occur in which medical practice could intervene to stabilize the faculty of speech for a few hours or, in favorable weather conditions, a few days before the next regression, the speech being more damaged each time it returned. Whenever she arranged a visit, Ilona had to coordinate the urgent wishes of feared and powerful men, the limited allowances the professor’s physician made, and the professor’s anticipated condition.

Lady Erna was the only one who saw through the little freckled woman’s scheme.

Once she innocently opened the door on them, or who knows, maybe she suspected something; the sight waiting for her in the professor’s book-lined room was so delicate and heartwarming that she silently closed the door.

She never found out whether Ilona had been aware of the silent intrusion.

It was in Erna’s interest not to disturb Ilona in the performance of this service.

Ilona also arranged the little Bellardi’s visits.

He came as he had used to in his student days, though for some weeks, thanks to the professor, he had been working as a researcher at a scientific institute. But he came to read foreign-language works to the professor, who tried to keep his mind off his deadly illness by keeping his mind alert. The professor’s students had to know Latin, had to be fluent above all in German but also in French, so they could read without hindrance and speak flawlessly when it was time to emphasize something; acquiring further languages he left to the personal interest of each student.

On his visits, Bellardi would receive a glass of tap water, sit in the winged easy chair by the window, and not interrupt his reading even when the professor dozed off.

He would politely go back and read the same text again when the patient awoke of his own accord.

They were just passing the Franciscans’ building, which for decades had been wrapped in scaffolding.

Lady Erna again addressed Bellardi very quietly.

Please forgive my inconsiderateness, she said, embarrassed, a remark that only deepened her clumsiness of the moment before. Now the pretense of her embarrassment was important. It was how she wanted to help herself get through this delicate situation and why, relying on the sheer sense of rhythm, she then stopped talking.

I’m at your service, Bellardi called back readily.

Less than a year earlier the friar here had died; for his whole life he had been the spiritual advisor of the family’s men and boys, and he had been Bellardi’s confessor too.

It’s most embarrassing, but would you mind telling me, please, Lady Erna continued in a livelier and sharper tone, after the pause she had made for effect, how is it possible that when last winter, as you mentioned earlier, when you were good enough to take us to the Opera—

To the Erkel Theater, Bellardi corrected the woman.

Now it would be better not to hear the sharp Jewish voice.

He felt as if everything together in one mass were crashing down on his shoulders and chest, all his former happiness in love, turned to torture and anxiety, were falling on him, everything he couldn’t ever confess to the old friar. He had never wanted to ask questions the good friar could probably not have answered. He hated to disappoint the friar, because he felt closer to him than to his father or his father-in-law, whom he truly respected and loved.

He could not have endured the friar’s noncommittal silence.

You’re right, of course, to the Erkel Theater, not the Opera House. But as far as I remember, you did not talk to the professor at all. I can’t get it through my head how that could have been. You and I haven’t been introduced, but the two of you must have met many times in earlier years.

I can certainly confirm that, of course, Bellardi replied, with the boyishly charming smile he used as a substitute for contempt. This time he showed his still strong, white, and irregular teeth.

The professor several times honored me with his attention and engaged me in conversation. In earlier times, I must add.

But then how could it happen.

Bellardi did not reply right away, because he was thinking of something entirely different and didn’t understand how or why. It happened so long ago. And it was pointless to think of such things. And now he could never tell anybody about it; he had no confidant and never would have.

I learned with sorrow from my son about the professor’s critical condition, he said slowly a little later. He would have thought it improper to name the real reason, yet at the same time it would be arrogant and deceptive to remain silent.

And truth to tell, he continued reluctantly, after a while the professor no longer paid attention to me.

On the backseat, both women leaned forward a little and listened carefully, spines straight and heads up.

Bellardi hesitantly continued to weigh things, even though he had said what he said, and ultimately it was not he but his dead confessor who spoke from his mouth. The old Franciscan had been of the opinion that at times there’s no point in avoiding saying something that flaunts one’s virtues or is involuntarily rude. Absent such remarks, one is likely to flaunt something even more unpleasant.

There is nothing more embarrassing than flaunting one’s modesty and humility.

To be honest, I didn’t want to embarrass him, because there are very few people I respect more than him.

He grew weak the moment he said this, but that made him talkative, and for a while they barely let each other get a word in edgewise.

I understand, I do, I’m very grateful that you answered. It was a very nice gesture on your part, understanding my poor husband’s condition.

On the contrary, I regret I couldn’t do more then and can’t do more now.

But as a matter of fact what I really wanted was to ask what has happened to your boy over these many years. I don’t know, I’ve no right to expect answers to such questions. And I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer.

Me, you know, they took me away at dawn from my apartment, but in the morning, without any warning, they carried off my little son too.

You’re not serious.

What could I say that would be more serious than this.

Because in that case, what happened to you is exactly what happened to us. Forgive my incredulity. My older brother was also taken away at dawn. The next day they came back and took away my little nephew.

It took two years for my father-in-law and mother-in-law to find the little boy.

It seems that was their way of doing things.

If it hadn’t been for an influential woman friend of ours, who was in special contact with such circles, they could not have fished him out from where he was. They had changed his name, his mother’s name too; luckily they didn’t change the date and place of his birth.

You’re not serious.

It sounds improbable, I admit, legal nonsense, Bellardi exclaimed, and at that moment many different emotions stuck in his throat.

They did whatever came into their heads.

Legal nonsense, I admit.

Matches our own family story, word for word, believe me.

They spent everything they had on it, whatever they were left with. What they deigned to leave them. But at least they weren’t relocated. That was our great good luck. And our influential friend told my father-in-law whom to bribe.

But where on earth did they find the child, if I may ask. My God, you’ve no idea how similar the stories of the two children are.

They so upset each other with their careless words that they both forgot about Gyöngyvér.

Pardon me, Bellardi said impatiently. Excuse me, but because of the strong wind I couldn’t hear your question.

And only at this moment, after she had spoken, did Erna understand fully that the stories of the two boys were identical in all respects. She shuddered at the thought. After all, Kristóf’s mother also left her child because of a woman, and in that case, how was the story or history to be understood.

She stared the devil in the eye, as if in the bedroom of the house in Venlo she and Geerte had not planned to run away and escape together.

True, they wouldn’t have fled without the children; they planned to escape their familiar world and take all four children with them to the Dutch Antilles.

After all these years, her quondam cowardice and her own flight struck her as a curse. She comprehended for the first time what she had accomplished with this miserable betrayal, of what she had deprived herself. Of nothing, because she made herself a different life, and no matter how she looked at it, her fate and this life were one.

Where, she asked, alarmed, her voice barely audible, if I may ask, where did they find your dear little boy.

She should stop thinking about these women. It was about time that this overpampered Geerte disappeared from her mind.

What a wonderful young man he has turned out to be. My husband is literally amazed by his mental abilities.

You’ll laugh, Bellardi answered and laughed himself, though there was not much joy in the laughter. They looked for him everywhere, at least in Transdanubia, they went to every remote orphanage and reformatory.

They figured it had to be a secret out-of-the-way place and, in the end, they found him in Buda, on Rózsadomb Street, only a few blocks from our apartment.

No, it can’t be, that’s unbelievable.

But it’s true.

You can’t be serious.

Why would I lie. If anything, I’ve been making myself ridiculous with my openness.

The reason I’m asking, man, is exactly because my mother also found my older brother’s son at Emmi Pikler’s place.*

I think that was her name, yes, that was the famous woman’s name, Bellardi answered, contempt making him hesitate, though he was trying to remain cool and neutral when confronted with these bygone matters. Or maybe that was the name of her famous school, I don’t know, probably, but today it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

My mother had to dig our nephew out of the same place too. But Erna of course kept quiet about how they had left the boy’s mother alone in that struggle. Our little Kristóf also had a different name when our mother found him. But my older brother never turned up, we haven’t heard anything about him since.

And she didn’t want to mention who her older brother was, the famous communist who had given his inheritance from his grandfather to the Party. For a short time, he had been minister of reparations and construction and had so enthusiastically and cheerfully shipped every intact or movable machine and other equipment to the Russians, as stipulated in the cease-fire agreement, that even his own party couldn’t put up with it.

Perhaps because of these thoughts, it happened that for the last third of the trip to the hospital no words passed between driver and passengers.

They had to retreat into themselves.

Bellardi was used to being treated as a servant, with his language he seemed to invite this role, but that someone should call him man, as they do with a jobber or ditch digger, that was too much.

And Lady Erna could not mention her brother or what he had done because for long minutes she couldn’t even moan for the pain, which now intermingled with the pain over the loss of her daughter, the betrayal of Geerte, and the dread released by the thought of her husband’s dying.

István, my God, Geerte — as if in her thinning voice she were whimpering or praying silently.

She had to think about the little nitroglycerin tablets that had been gathered off the cab’s dirty floor only a short while earlier, and about her silver pillbox. The only thing she wanted to mention quickly to Bellardi was that they never succeeded in learning anything about her brother’s fate. She also found very little trace of her young daughter. Where they might have taken her or where her bones or ashes were. Might her brother have been in jail together with someone who might still be alive. If they hadn’t beaten him to death the day they arrested him at dawn.

If she let one more sound out of her body, if she squeezed out one more syllable, she was sure to break into a howling sob.

As it was, she only yelped into the noises of the cab’s jouncing on the cobblestones, into the squealing gusts of wind.

As Bellardi drove his cab to the hospital that Monday morning — and when he looked into the rearview mirror to speak or listen to this other person, this lecherous Jewess, and felt compassionate toward her — his memory preferred to take him back to that long-gone summer, recalling every little detail. To the endless clinic corridor where all the doors stood wide open and his steps made an infernal racket. To the brass handle on the door to the ward, which he had to press down; to his own shadow.

His shadow was going to meet Elisa’s shadow.

And then, in all its reality, there lay before him that morning what remained of Elisa.

Both he and Mária Szapáry found some gratification in the half hour or forty minutes they spent sitting together in the noisy corridor; being close in a time of trouble and in the most profound feeling of being in the same situation because they loved the same being. For without hesitation they would, for Elisa, have strangled or murdered with a pistol, hunting rifle, anything, a knife or their bare hands. And their peculiar solidarity was enriched by their being a man and a woman, proportionately entwined with Elisa’s life.

What other human joy could she possibly expect.

Later Bellardi’s father-in-law arrived, which is when Bellardi took his leave of both of them; he felt he had dutifully done all that was humanly possible to do. Szapáry accompanied him to the turn in the corridor, where Bellardi kissed the woman’s forehead and Szapáry kissed him lightly on the mouth.

Vainly, he thought that with a firm decision he could free himself of the pain.

But he took the pain with him and it hadn’t left him since. From the lobby of the clinic he called and gave instructions to his housekeeper and then, as if preparing for a carefree little summer trip, he absentmindedly put the top down, got into his open car, and drove to Mohács. What else could he do if he had already forgiven unhappy Mária Szapáry.

It was high time he transferred his aunt’s house, sold and almost completely emptied, to its new owner so he could collect the money for it.

The blazing summer and the breeze created by his uniform speed managed somewhat to cleanse him of his past. Perhaps only for a few hours, perhaps only for the brief duration of his arrival. Madzar was about to cross the stone-paved yard, was halfway between the veranda and the workshop, when Bellardi arrived late in the afternoon and suddenly, with lots of noise and a playful gait, walked in through the arched gate. Frozen in their interrupted movements, they stared at each other.

Bellardi did not step into the yard, had not even opened the gate completely.

His leather cap sat rakishly on the crown of his head, the wavy tufts of his chestnut hair falling loosely from it; the milk-white skin on his neck and on his face had burned red on the trip. Madzar blushed deeply with joy and dread.

And they did not greet each other.

Perhaps they did not consider formalities, or the lack of them, to be significant. Both felt the presence of the other as the greatest possible surprise. Perhaps there was no formula for a salutation in such an encounter. Madzar was still filled with noisy and blissful memories of the Szemzős’ visit, with the shouting of the little boys, the smell of the Danube, the taste of the woman’s lips, the sensation of her small breasts, and he could see Bellardi had come by neither boat nor train.

In the most significant moments of life, one’s mind is busy with completely inessential, insignificant things.

Bellardi’s brand-new leather cap caught his attention and the fact that Bellardi had come in his new car, which his father-in-law had given him along with the cap.

The Szemzős had left in the afternoon of the previous day, by train, and he had sat on the veranda until dawn, feeling empty and drinking insanely, drinking in the infernal barking of dogs, to forget her, just to forget. But he felt he couldn’t get drunk, not even a little. Just struggling with his mind, fuck, why couldn’t he just pass out. He wanted to wind up under the table. To crack open his torture with moans and whimpers and let all the pain flow out. He trampled one naked foot with the other, alternating them in short intervals, stared at his disgusting toes, writhing like maggots in battlefield corpses.

Unable to wring a single sound out of himself.

Still, what he felt was not pure pain because he had been made permanently happy by the knowledge that with the furniture he was making he could at last reveal his secret self to Mrs. Szemző.

Jealousy tortured him; a sense of deprivation hurt him greatly.

They stood side by side in the great silence and coolly spoke of styles.

He could not tell either of his selves, not the one holding forth on furniture styles or the other, sterner one, so far removed from cool discourse, that he did not like Mrs. Szemző or did not know what Mrs. Szemző liked in him, because he so unbearably wanted her body. Which, on the morning of the previous day, he had had a chance to see displayed in a bathing suit. And when in his workshop, in the steamy afternoon of the same day, in a stolen, not entirely safe moment and in dizzying confusion, they fell on each other, laid hands on, patted, bit, and grabbed each other, hugged and kissed, and with their kisses stamped each other with all the hunger, longing, and desire they had previously stifled and denied, he felt he was touching a taut bow; at the same time he felt on his chest her girlishly tender, trembling breasts.

When he had to get up to urinate, to piss on his mother’s roses, he felt he had managed to get drunk.

He could hardly stagger to the steps without some support.

One can’t urinate with an erect prick.

I’ll piss on it for her, anyway, since I’m already a Hungarian and love my country.

I don’t give a shit about my German mother’s fucking roses.

He could not get a proper hold on his penis because then the urine wouldn’t have started to flow, but he didn’t want to piss on his feet either. Holding it properly would have kept up the erection and blocked the urine. Because of Mrs. Szemző, he’d completely forgotten that for weeks he had been waiting thirstily for Bellardi more than for anybody else. And now he was here. Or perhaps he should fuck this little Izabella what’s-her-name instead of Mrs. Szemző; the one with her scar had been left here for him anyway, and he could tell by her smell that she had nobody. A lonely animal, like me.

Why do I always wind up with women whom others have discarded.

And now he could not remember why in hell he had been waiting for this Bellardi, what could he have wanted from him, from such a man; and because of the rotten women he also couldn’t remember the miserable sentence he had so carefully prepared to surprise Bellardi with, and himself too.

What could I have wanted to tell him, what could I have wanted from him, and about what.

Bellardi shook him on the shoulder, nodded to him that he should come, it was time for them to go, and narrowed the slits of his usually smiling eyes even more.

Madzar greatly missed Bellardi’s permanent smile and disdain for the world; their absence made Bellardi a stranger to him.

He saw that something irreparable had happened to him.

His wordless reply was clear; they should go to the Danube.

Where else.

While the sun is still up.

Then I’ll bring my bathing suit, said Madzar.

Leave it behind, said Bellardi, why make a fuss.

From which he knew where Bellardi wanted to go, the place where pants weren’t necessary, and if only for that reason he did not object.

I’ll tell my mother.

Go ahead, tell her, grumbled Bellardi. I’ll wait for you outside. Why don’t you fuss some more, my friend, go on, worry a little more.

But Madzar turned around from the veranda steps, where the previous night he had several times managed to piss all over his mother’s beloved roses. Within the pungent odor of his own, he unexpectedly began to smell the familiar odor of his father’s urine. Bellardi always and in everything had been more foresighted than he, and Madzar as a child had grown used to following him almost always, and in almost everything, despite the fact that he, Madzar, was the more thoughtful of the two. He usually followed Bellardi without due reflection. There was no need to tell his mother; after all, they were going only a stone’s throw away. If he told her, there’d be no end to the rejoicing, to the feeding, to offering more than necessary, to the familiar display of affected manners.

And meantime the sun would set.

When he and Bellardi decided to do something or took something into their heads, they usually forgot everything else. For which Madzar had suffered many serious slaps on his face. He never knew what would happen; with Bellardi things kept changing, growing, multiplying, losing their boundaries, becoming almost incomprehensible. He took his place next to him in the fancy car, unkempt, unwashed, with a two-day growth of beard, wearing the work clothes he had not changed since the day before, and even before he slammed the car door shut Bellardi stepped on the gas.

It was a Maybach Cabriolet with red-and-black leather seats, red gearbox, its dashboard also covered with the same red leather.

As if on purpose, Bellardi first made his perfect automobile cough and jolt, as if he couldn’t get it past its basic starting mode, but seconds later, smoothly and with great speed they flew along Duna Row, lined with round-crowned elm trees, which followed the course of the river on the reinforced-concrete embankment.

They could smell the water.

He slowed down near the church of the Roman Catholic Episcopacy, where a majestically swaying high-piled hay cart, drawn by oxen, approached. Farther away, nervously bleating goats were being herded along the road. Women on foot carried baskets on their backs, and from Fürdő Street, boys and girls were rolling out on their bicycles, probably the local jeunesse dorée.

I realized I was wrong, Madzar said slowly, now remembering his cleverly prepared sentence. He wanted to be done with his deceitful confession, to avoid dealing with Bellardi’s foolish conspiracy and his whole secret life.

But he was not accustomed to insincerity and betrayal.

It’s a good thing you gave me time to think it over, he said, glancing cautiously at Bellardi.

What did you realize, what’s wrong, Bellardi asked, his tone hostile; he kept looking impassively at the increasing traffic before them. As if he had not felt the other man’s eyes on his face, or as if with his mind’s eye he were following a hovering figure whom only he could see.

I changed my mind, Madzar replied, shocked.

What mind, what did you change, that’s what I’m asking, Bellardi said, becoming irritated.

You told me that at the appropriate moment you would come for my answer.

Bellardi said nothing for a long while; the silence was icy. As if he were busy with the thickening traffic and could say nothing until they got out of it. When they had left the boat station behind and then the silk factory with its long brick wall, the riverside road again became empty and he could once again speed up.

When, twenty-three years later, he thought about this long, deep silence of his, they happened to be driving past the jail on Margit Boulevard.

What I told you then, he finally said, unexpectedly, after Madzar had given up on getting a response, was that I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.

You must have thought I was joking.

Madzar turned his head slowly toward Bellardi, looking at him in alarm, even though alarm is always rapid.

What could he say to this.

Leave off with your embarrassing jokes.

Everything else is delusion, Bellardi replied with his most playful world-disdaining smile. Believe me, this was my only sincere sentence, perhaps it will be the first and last one of my entire life.

You don’t have to call special attention to it, Madzar replied hoarsely, this makes it even more embarrassing.

I meant everything else was evasion, prevarication, and who can remember all the things I rambled on about and when.

But you can understand, can’t you, that I also thought about your patriotic fantasies.

And now I ask you to forget them, please.

Should I understand, then, that in the meantime you and your friends have dropped your plans concerning me.

Now it was Bellardi’s turn to look at his friend.

My reluctance must have made a discouraging impression, I understand, Madzar continued, to his friend’s curious disdainful look.

This must have been the test. I have to acknowledge I passed the screening.

A rare moment, given that Bellardi detected offended vanity in Madzar’s melodious voice. Which he liked. That with his offense he’d managed to penetrate Madzar so deeply.

If you reject me, my little friend, I also reject you.

We’ll see who is the stronger.

Only now did Madzar notice how alarmingly his one and only friend had diminished in his shirt and pants while he had waited for him in vain all summer.

How the bitter grooves of his face had deepened.

How chapped his lips were.

But now I must tell you something entirely different, Bellardi said dryly.

No, not that, exclaimed Madzar to himself, guessing instantly what kind of story Bellardi wanted to tell him with his shockingly chapped lips that almost looked like one large sore.

Actually, his friend continued relentlessly, I wanted to tell you about it in April.

The very moment, he thought to himself, when I saw you on the deck of my ship. How good to see him; he had been my only friend, I’ll tell him about it, he’s my man.

Which made him, as a hot flush would, love the other man even more.

We’re not yet thirty, Madzar shouted desperately, his words sounding like a thunderclap because of his deep voice.

I thought these things then, now I can say them aloud.

It’s possible I can’t tell you even now, Bellardi continued, as if he had not heard or understood the reason for his friend’s shout.

You don’t have to be afraid of me.

Madzar didn’t want to hear from his friend’s lips what he could know from his own life; he did not want to hear about Elisa.

He wanted to force Bellardi; they should not yet give up hope, should not seal their fate by talking.

Which the other man instantly understood, how could he not understand his friend’s insane and sober rejection, and he stopped talking.

That is why Madzar loved him.

No matter how insistent he was about something, for the sake of a little sensible love he could give it up. But it was hard for Bellardi to stick to the cavalier exchange. He could not quite understand what the other man had not understood. He could not accept his friend’s incomprehension because he could not explain to himself why, for the sake of his little son, he should remain all alone in life.

They had not left town when, just past Gottlieb’s abandoned lumberyard, the paved road ended at Calvin Street. And then he’d have no choice but to kill his little boy before ending his own miserable life. The cloudless blue summer sky expanded above them with a flock of swallows preparing for evening. Madzar wanted to ask Bellardi what his view was on why he, Madzar, always had to fall in love with married women. What sort of weakness was this. That’s what they should be talking about. And he’d ask Bellardi to name this weakness of his, no matter how harsh his verdict might be. He should not be spared. But he did not ask Bellardi, and therefore Bellardi could not answer him. Why does he have to snatch these used-up ladies from their boring marriages. Why does he always fall into the same trap. And if this keeps happening because that’s his destiny, then why do these same women always destroy him instead of letting him pull them out of their predicaments. Why wouldn’t Mrs. Szemző go with him to America or anywhere else. And why wouldn’t she go as far as letting him fuck her at least once.

Why don’t they let the new life find its voice in them.

Wasn’t he worth at least that much.

The screeching of the swallows above them overwhelmed the noise of the engine.

Sweet Irma, it was the first time he addressed her like this when talking to himself, why can’t we.

He did this, busied himself with this, so he would not have to grasp Bellardi by the shoulder.

Could they possibly predict my inconstancy.

Meanwhile the bright and vast vanishing greenness of Réti Lane filled their eyes as their ears were filled with the swallows’ evening screeches. Which drastically changed many things; it turned their mood around. Their mutual rejections made them finally turn to each other. With its enormous willows looking like uncombed heads of hair, the Cigányzátony, or Gypsy Shallows, lay before them, splitting the river into two channels; these shallows, obeying the force of currents over the centuries, had become a romantic island.

Bellardi drove slowly along the high embankment.

Their thoughts had retrieved so much from the past, immersed them so generously in the present, that there could be no room for talking about anything.

But Bellardi felt once again that Madzar’s sheer presence had a calming effect on him.

He looked for a place where they could drive off the embankment. On the dangerously damp soft grass he wouldn’t be able to get close to the willows on the shore. By the time they got out of the car, both of them were dazed and a bit woozy. Bellardi had had nothing to eat or drink since morning, but in his current giddiness he did not notice his hunger. They sank to the bottom of a green sea in their daze. High up in the blue sky, swallows went on twittering. Bellardi sought a physical antidote for giddiness by undressing hastily and provocatively; Madzar followed him hesitantly. Telling himself that Bellardi’s showing off had no effect on him. And in fact it didn’t, because he didn’t let it. Bellardi threw his things back into the car, his white shirt, his white linen pants; Madzar put his things, carefully folded, on a black-and-red leather seat. When Bellardi stepped out of his brightly striped white poplin underpants, Madzar took off his own. For a while they stood naked on either side of the car, both of them bashfully enjoying the warm air, laced with cool currents, on their nakedness.

Because neither of them wanted to look at the other just yet.

The sun’s disc glowed at the rim of the western sky.

And the little Cabriolet remained at the vapor-filled bottom of the slowly graying green meadow, like a colorful insect at rest, wings spread wide.

The willows on the shore swallowed up their figures. A little later they showed up on the sandy stretch near the water. But before they threw themselves in, after more than a decade’s absence, after many eventful years during which they’d barely thought of each other, they took a long moment to observe each other. They did this simultaneously and unreservedly. As people who couldn’t do without it. They did not stand too close together. They acknowledged with a certain satisfaction that during their adult years spent without each other everything had changed and yet nothing at all had happened to the other’s body. This was beyond comprehension yet its reality could not be denied.

And from then on, everything happened the way it had happened so many times before in the heart of time.

Bellardi hit the water first, snorted and splashed about a little, and then began to swim with large strokes toward the opposite shore; his crawl was impressive, his feet fluttered powerfully. Madzar followed him in a more deliberate clumsy manner. The lateral arm of the river had no significant current; still, at the deepest part its strength caught them and carried them along. Bellardi looked back occasionally; they both tried to keep up the tempo and stay on course.

With his denser musculature, Madzar resisted the current more, but he was slower.

Bellardi did not wait for him when he reached the other shore; he quickly disappeared into the island’s vegetation, flaming red in the advancing twilight. They did not see each other among the trees, where every year, because of repeated inundations, wild undergrowth sprang up in the sunny spots. They signaled to each other with hooting and ululating sounds; they signaled their belonging to each other. When Bellardi didn’t ululate for a long time, Madzar’s hoots sounded impatient. He had to be ready for Bellardi not replying on purpose.

Even as a young child he had liked to toy with the idea of disappearing.

At such moments, heavy with the other one’s sudden absence, the riparian woods suffused with light began ominously to close in on Madzar. But Bellardi always waited for him on the shore. Madzar could count on that.

Where the world finally opened wide and the broader branch of the mighty river showed itself with its raw power and the colors that revealed its depth.

Madzar was afraid of it, but Bellardi could not resist trusting it.

Madzar was afraid that even after these many years Bellardi still knew no caution or self-restraint. For a while they traipsed around on the stony shore, letting the water dry on them, enjoying being naked, and with occasional glances trying to gauge what the other one was planning to do or how he was managing.

The edge of the opposite riverbank and the woods reaching deep into Mohács Island were improbably red in the setting sun. In the empty sky, however, the moon was already shining hazily over the water. From far away, somewhere from the endless plain on the island, the low sound of a cowbell and sharp little yelps, the barking of nervous shepherd dogs, could be heard. But mainly they heard the plashing and lapping of water breaking on the shore in uneven thrusts. The creaking and grating of stones, pebbles, and shells under their feet. Occasionally a nearby splash made by a jumping fish; the brief flash of a slick body followed by a graceful downward arc back into the water. The current had a steady, uniform whisper, like a susurration of silks rubbed together, as varying masses of water of varying temperatures drifted and rolled over one another. The willows above them were quiet now except for an occasional solitary drip.

The great summer heat remained motionless in the air, despite the proximity of the water.

What madness had they got themselves into now; there was no other name for it, madness, insanity.

Not even a childish or adolescent madness, because neither as children nor as adolescents would they have started something like this so late in the day.

And now it was Madzar who headed for the water first, Bellardi following him only when, fighting the strong current along the shore, Madzar popped up to the surface. Then Bellardi took off too. It had often happened like this in their childhood; Madzar would be first to throw himself into some madness that Bellardi had cooked up quietly and treacherously, just so he didn’t have to follow Bellardi.

A good ten minutes must have gone by before they began to look for each other in the water. They were well into the middle of the river, where speed is speed and water is water. There is nothing but water and speed. One can feel how much energy is lost by a careless movement of the head or a searching look, and how the place of the lost energy is filled with the all-powerful force of the river. Which within a split second can change irreversibly, setting back one’s personal situation and chances. Though here, in the middle of the mighty water, the river is harmless.

With its innocently smooth current, it can take one straight to eternity.

In the middle of the river, where the enormous mass of water with its changing surface and refraction of light blinds everyone, Bellardi had to be careful that nothing he wanted to tell Madzar would reach his consciousness, especially Elisa’s dying.

He had to keep himself on the surface of his consciousness and to continue with his strokes on the surface of the water.

It seems that the opposite shore, bright red with the last rays of the sun, toward which you are heading with all your most efficiently dispensed strength and strictly controlled breathing, is being pulled away from you, taken farther and farther away with incredible alacrity. They wasted much energy, had no idea how much, did not find each other on the endless surface of the water for the longest time. It’s the vigorously changing mass of the surface water that blinds one. Eyes cannot cope with so many consecutive and overlapping changes. And the mind gapes vacantly when it has nothing to comprehend over the terrible depth below it. While in fact one should feel most secure in the middle of the river, where there is no whirlpool and seemingly nothing needs to be done in order to progress.

One begins to fear and tremble.

Theoretically one should not look around until one is close enough to the wildly retreating opposite shore, let alone think or rise out of the water.

Not become paralyzed by the terror of existence.

And then they both ascertained each other’s location. Madzar seemed to have risked more.

If you break the rhythm of your strokes for even a second when swimming upstream, the current will begin to carry you back, and then it is very hard to reclaim your physical independence from the mass of water rising from the depths of the river.

Not only are you afraid, you also begin to feel cold.

When they looked around and acknowledged each other’s position and instantaneously gauged the necessary reference points on the impossibly reddish shore, still retreating, they both knew they had as much ahead of them as the distance they had already covered. Bellardi had always been faster, he was a little closer to the shore but affected more by the current, while Madzar with his stronger, more stubborn strokes remained more or less on the course he had set with his eyes; the current had not deflected him too much.

It must have taken another eight minutes before they reached the shore. And there, in the heavy silt, they had to walk lifting their feet high.

They felt happy when the warm air fully embraced their naked bodies.

There they stood again, basking in the paradisiacal abundance of warmth and gentleness, jumping, hawking, spitting, shaking the water from their ears, wiping their eyes, their bodies shivering foolishly, of which they were ashamed before each other, they were slapping and rubbing themselves, both of them thickly covered with goose bumps, their teeth chattering.

In their momentary condition, they did not seek each other’s closeness.

That is when the last red trace of twilight vanished from the shore, though an orange reflection turning into hues of lilac remained, which made the moon shine more brightly and show its outline more brightly in the blueness.

They looked at each other from a distance, only to see if the other was there, all of him. That’s all they wanted to see; though, a little bit, this was like mutually acknowledging their physical condition that had let them run aground in their mad adventure.

To see if there was still a way back.

The water must have carried them about a kilometer and a half from the tip of Cigányzátony. On foot they would have to cover twice that distance to be back again at their starting point.

But it was better not to think about it.

It would be dark soon. There would be hardly any reference points in the water. And when they happily reached the other shore, they would still have to swim across the river’s smaller channel.

Now, however, they must warm up. They should not jump and run around too much; it was important to preserve energy and keep from cutting their feet on shells.

When their teeth stopped chattering they lay down at a respectable distance from each other. They did warm up a little on the slowly cooling sand, and Madzar even dozed off after a while. He opened his eyes to see Bellardi squatting at his head. The world around them was somewhat cooler and full of stars; he felt the warmth emanating from the other’s body. That he was lying on the sand in the heat emanating from his friend. Stars now penetrated the still-blue sky.

He sat up. Down here, on earth, it was dark enough for them to start out.

For a while though, he observed what this male image of his own soul was looking at.

In truth, already in April I wanted to tell you, Bellardi repeated, his words heavy, that Elisa left me for good, and you’ll be surprised to know that she did it because of Mária Szapáry.

Madzar said not a word; he would not have had the strength to breathe enough air to form the words.

They looked at the moon together, not daring to look into each other’s eyes, at the glowing of its cold outline above the water.

She called me at dawn yesterday to tell me Elisa had had a cerebral hemorrhage. That I should hurry if I still wanted to see her.

Madzar cried out involuntarily, or rather he moaned.

Bellardi had to get up in response to this so the other one would get up too.

Now they looked at each other, also held each other somehow, but their nakedness stopped them. They could not have known what the other one was thinking; no one could ever know. They were standing in the warmth of each other’s skin, and Madzar felt very fortunate, though he tried to talk himself out of this feeling because it was inappropriate just then. The movement begun could not be completed. There was so little chance of completing it that he thought it better to get away from the place.

He thought that regardless of the occasion, regardless of Elisa’s death, touching each other should be repeated at least every ten years, so that his life, despite all the misfortunes, would be a fortunate one. Bellardi, however, thought he should continue what he had started.

And then, as they were, they set off, up on the darkening riverbank.

Neither of them could squeeze out a word.

As Bellardi followed Madzar, who was finding his stride, and could see nothing but the powerful thighs, large buttocks, and stooping back with its slabs of muscles, he felt that, yes, this was when he should continue his story about Elisa. Because of the enormous happiness that was his now, he could no longer keep his secrets locked within himself, the terrible suffering he had to endure in the last months.

Gyöngyvér sat sunk into herself, pale, sucking in her lips, abandoned for long minutes, motionless.

It would have to happen differently because he could not speak. He could not surrender himself to someone who probably knew everything about him. He walked in the footsteps of the beloved being, and that seemed satisfactory for some time. On a summer evening like this, it grows dark very slowly and tactfully. And they had to hurry. They would not have had time for a detailed confession. Neither of them had ever learned from anyone, perhaps they should have learned from each other, how to talk about their feelings. Suffering has no language, and its muteness only deepens it. Later they lost their way in the darkness, for a long time they lost track of each other, they could not find the tip of the island and the water carried them both past it. They each had to swim alone in the night.

Although the moon lit up a riverbank opposite them, it was as though they could no longer be sure which bank was pulling away from them so rapidly. They swam, worked their lungs and muscles, swam on, alone and abandoned, and they did not reach it, did not reach the far shore.

It probably couldn’t have happened otherwise, though it would have been impossible to give up what happened.

Perhaps he should have taken Bellardi into his arms, right there on the riverbank.

Gyöngyvér in the cab could think of nothing else either; she was continuously compelled to think of that one thing, never again.

And if she could think of nothing else, how could she free herself from all the various senses of never-again. Her body filled with all the sensations contained in never-again. There were many kinds of pain, suffering, each according to its kind, and much pleasure, much lightness, and joy.

It would have been impossible to distinguish among them.

And she could not possibly live by his side, in his icy apathy.

Could not live without him.

And, because of her self-respect, she was the one who should initiate their breakup, she must take the first step.

I’ll move out.

They will humiliate her.

If she doesn’t go away, these Lehrs will humiliate her more than anyone ever had, anywhere and at any time. If she doesn’t manage to say tonight, I’m moving out.

It’s over.

If he does it again in front of her, if he dares, and won’t let her close to him.

You must be a pig if you can beat your meat in front of me and not even look at me. But at least I had the chance to see what men do with themselves. Now I know everything about you pigs, you lousy wretches.

Yet she felt there was no humiliation she could not endure. If only she could stay with him.

But he should spurt it on her, spurt his semen on her instead of spluttering his come on the floor, not on the parquet floor, so Ilona could see what the pig had done; how could anybody be such a filthy pig.

Lady Erna watched the young woman silently as they left Moszkva Square behind them.

You’re so quiet, Gyöngyvér, my dear, you look unusually pale, she said in the backseat of the Pobeda, her voice quite loud though she still held herself aloof.

Listen to me, Ágost, Gyöngyvér kept saying to herself, because she wanted to rehearse what she would tell him that evening.

It’s over, I should have known it would be over because of you, but now it really is, everything is over between us.

After what you did to me last night.

And she heard Lady Erna saying something to the effect that she sincerely hoped everything was all right.

Except I might faint, but I wouldn’t say that to you aloud.

Lady Erna has nothing to worry about.

What a lousy, rotten old woman, she thought, as rotten as her little son. What could be all right, what in the fuck could be all right.

But heedlessly she begged Lady Erna’s pardon, she said everything was perfectly all right, she was only ruminating on something.

Ruminating on what, what was she ruminating about, Lady Erna cried with an offensive laugh.

She’d have given anything to know what Gyöngyvér had to ruminate on so thoroughly.

Luckily the other person can’t know it.

Aunt Nínó should not worry about her.

Well, she has enough to worry about Ágost. Who keeps disappearing. That’s the cause of her heart trouble, and the constant maternal worries have ruined her general health.

Gyöngyvér has no idea how much.

The moment they get to the hospital, she will call him, Gyöngyvér responded in her servile voice.

What did Aunt Nínó think he’d been doing to her. That maybe he’d made Gyöngyvér an exception.

No, not a chance.

He’s rude.

Says, I’ll pick you up at six.

He’s not there at eight or even at ten.

Something’s come up — hard to believe, but that’s all he says.

But what has come up, Ágost, my dear.

Unfortunately she always talks to him as if she’s already forgiven him for everything, in advance, for anything.

How could she be kinder or more polite to him.

He doesn’t answer.

And why didn’t you call me, Ágost, my dear, to tell me that something’s come up.

He has no explanation for the simplest things, acts as if he hadn’t even heard me.

Of course she would try to reach him, to find him.

He just keeps staring with his big eyes.

It’s very insolent of him to cause his own mother so much grief.

And at a time like this, added Lady Erna and, quite unexpectedly, still somewhat mellowed by her wickedness and sentimentality during the previous minutes, she cried out, then cut short the sound and swallowed her tears. Though she felt at home in Gyöngyvér’s company because of the younger woman’s submissive tone, she also pitied her almost as much as she did herself.

That’s very kind of you, Gyöngyvér, and it will be important to do, since I think we won’t have much time.

Lady Erna could count on her, absolutely.

Because if she couldn’t find him, she was sure she would find one of the boys.

They were still calling to each other, seemingly in vain, when they both reached the shore on that enchanted night, which they felt to be endless.

I can always leave him a message if I can’t reach him otherwise, that he should come right away to Kútvölgyi Hospital.

After continued and desperate hooting, they found each other, teeth chattering.

Or if I can’t find the boys, their secretary will surely be at her desk, by the phone.

As if it were the world’s greatest miracle that neither of them had drowned in the river and suddenly they were both standing there among the pale moonlit trees, their bodies trembling, only an arm’s length apart.

But then, shaking and trembling, they had to look for Bellardi’s abandoned car, and he did not even hear what the two women behind him were chattering about.

They looked for it so long in the darkness punctuated with the hooting of owls that they thought the entire night would be spent in the search and that they were merely dreaming that it was possible to find anything.

From then on they said not a word to each other; in the moonlit darkness they even restrained the chattering of their teeth, so that they’d have absolutely nothing to do with each other, not even what chattering teeth might betray.

They could reveal nothing about themselves to each other, and mainly not their weakness, nothing about the fallibility of their bodies.

There was a terrible chance that they might loose their infernal wrath on each other’s goose-bumpy body.

They would have loudly reproached each other for something for which they could not reproach themselves. As if they had lost each other because of each other. They could not find the damn car with their clothes in it because of him; it was his fault, that damned other one.

Luckily they were stubborn and determined enough to hold their peace, though each felt strongly the silent wrath and hatred of the other.

And when he finally discharged the two women in front of the hospital and they, tugging on their gloves and holding their hats against the wind, slowly made their way up the steps, which remained blindingly white even under the overcast sky, Bellardi could hardly comprehend that in his unfolding life this might have been the happiness which until now had not proved worthy of even being mentioned.

A completely different, strange life that might have been his if it had found its substance in him, not only resistance and toleration. His happiness could not escape him, though it did not possess him; until this very moment, he had not even acknowledged that it was precisely with this pain and this lack that happiness did not escape him. There was no continuation, and the beginning had vanished in obscurity. Once, a long time ago, his alien life with all its futility and unexpected pleasure had snatched him up from the bottom of unhappiness to take him to itself, body and soul, as an empty object, into its iron fist, and then, just as unexpectedly it had dropped him and left nothing behind except the deadly bleakness of boredom and fatigue, war, humiliations, jail, and privations.

He had to get across it.

Now it was wringing his heart.

He did not know why he should have to get across it or whether that bleakness would even have a far side.

At any rate, he had no strength left to turn the key in the ignition.

And there was the realization that with Lojzi Madzar and Elisa he had indeed tasted and enjoyed the happiness of being privileged, however their story ended or had not even started.

That is the sum of what was; everything else would begin only now.

Leaning across the rim of his consciousness, he managed to comprehend the strangeness of his condition; I wouldn’t have this much strength left, I shouldn’t have even this much strength, but actually, I’m not surprised.

I was still young then, a young man. I could swim across the Danube at Mohács with my young friend, a number of times too, and now I can’t turn the damn key in the ignition.

Back then I also knew I was swimming across my death, which I enjoyed immensely. What I enjoyed was that despite all my misfortunes my muscles and nerves functioned flawlessly in face of the elements.

In the hospital lobby, decorated with tropical plants, palm trees, and giant ficuses, inspired by the fascist spirit of wondrous sterilization and furnished in the style of imperial modernity, whose coffered ceiling was supported by smooth marble columns, and in which at this hour not a soul was to be found, the porter showed Gyöngyvér where the telephone booth was.

This hospital was perhaps the last edifice left in the city that had once dreamed of a Hungarian empire, before everything collapsed.

Follow me as soon as you can, Lady Erna motioned to her from the elevator that was to take her up to the psychiatric ward on the top floor where the professor was being treated for brain softening.*

Looking out of the spacious glass phone booth while she waited, dialed, and then talked, Gyöngyvér noticed that the pike-gray Pobeda was still parked in front of the hospital.

She spoke to the secretary; none of the boys was in, but she managed to arouse the secretary’s curiosity as well as her willingness to help since they were talking about a matter of life and death, and Ágost Lippay’s father literally had only a few hours left to live. She saw the pike-gray Pobeda make a sharp turn in front of the building, its wheels screeching; it barely missed slamming against the sidewalk across the street. Gyöngyvér almost cried out. And then the cab pulled into the hospital parking lot but stopped as if there were no marked parking spaces or as if the engine had been suddenly throttled.

They hadn’t told him to wait; it was very suspicious, what this Bellardi was doing in the parking lot.

She could not give him her full attention because the secretary on the phone was promising that she’d try to track down the boys right away.

And as if she were saying.

Where.

What are you saying.

Track down the boys where, Gyöngyvér shouted, because there was much noise around her now.

She thinks all three of them are there, the secretary said, involuntarily raising her voice at the other end of the line. They can’t be anywhere else, she shouted. No doubt about it, today they seem to be staying a little longer than usual.

The poor things, sometimes they work at night too.

A bus passed by on Kútvölgyi Street, going uphill, its engine loud, and Gyöngyvér could not hear where the secretary thought Ágost and the boys might now be. She was relieved that he was not with another woman who might take him away from her, so she wouldn’t have to break with him tonight.

You can count on me, shouted the otherwise lazily indifferent woman, I’ll do it right away.

But where are they, for God’s sake, Gyöngyvér insisted, what did you say, I didn’t get it.

That’s the part I didn’t get.

I’ll get to them, Gyöngyvér, leave it to me, don’t worry, I will.

You must have other things to do now.

You don’t have to worry about this.

But despite all her promises, the secretary did not manage to find them. Gyöngyvér put down the receiver, calmed herself, and, with a last glimpse at the cab, headed for the elevator.

As if being able to drive his cab into the lot had been a great accomplishment. Bellardi took off his worn leather cap and did not understand why he was perspiring. In the oppressive dimness he leaned on the steering wheel for a while to rest a little. He was ashamed that one of the wheels had hit the sidewalk, as if his greatest concern now were damage done to the cab, property of the state-owned taxi service. However, not only his forehead was covered with perspiration. As soon as his head touched the steering wheel, he felt that his bare neck was soaking wet, which made him feel cold.

But why am I cold if I’m so hot, which I can’t feel.

I don’t feel anything, I’m becoming numb.

This is the reason that in the darkness descending about his shoulders he had to recall the particular summer night that most likely had accepted his life and absorbed it. How curious, how his shoulders throbbed and how weighty the past proved to be.

When his entire naked body trembled.

As if, at the sight of the unknown future, he were trembling for life, fearful of what was ahead because of his abandoned life. The life he would have gladly given, all his life, to Elisa, and had feared — he now at last realized — giving to Madzar. He saw how helplessly Madzar’s naked body was trembling only an arm’s length away; Madzar could not control his either. And perhaps it had been in his power to stop or relieve the trembling.

But his armpits and chest became drenched under the ice-cold shirt, his loins and, oddly, the crook of his knees too; he could feel sweat dripping down his calves.

The secretary could not reach the boys because at the end of the glass-covered corridor of the Lukács Baths, nobody bothered with the telephone ringing in the cabin attendant’s booth. It rang insistently and long and then it ceased for a short while only to begin anew a little farther away in the public phone booth.

The bench, on which a little while ago and under the indignant gaze of the new attendant the three friends had been lying in one another’s laps and arms, was now empty; those attractive men, with their choice rudeness and equally choice gentleness, had been trying to keep Ágost from another attack of despondency. The realization had never reached Gyöngyvér’s awareness that the man she loved, whom she would have to leave during the approaching evening, was a seriously afflicted and endangered melancholic. The thought would have paralyzed her or would have ruined her amorous enthusiasm, which she considered a gift more precious than anything else in the world.

She could not have imagined that with her enthusiasm she had failed to reach, let alone mitigate, the other person’s weltschmerz.

At this moment, André Rott’s cabin stood empty. Unquestionably the most envied cabin even among the most privileged bathing guests, it was the very last in the row of cabins, next to the bathing master’s booth and the stairs going up to the sun terrace. In front of it was the famous bench on which one could lounge, sunbathe from spring to fall, receive guests and chat with them, not to mention the public phone at hand on which, in contrast with all other public telephones in Budapest, one could receive calls. A short while ago, Rott had had only enough time to throw off all his clothes and, with a certain physical repugnance, put on his wet bathing trunk before dashing off.

Events, running on various tracks, now followed at fever-pitch speed.

When a few moments earlier, as the ambulance people had put the young man slightly injured during his epileptic fit on a stretcher and taken him away, the prime minister’s private secretary appeared in the corridor, having come from the steam bath; he was still red and perspiring. A rapidly balding, not very tall man with a slight limp, who, according to his official title, was head of the prime minister’s secretariat with the rank of cabinet minister, had arrived through the secret side door, which invisible hands closed behind him.

He went about the world as unimpeded as if he could walk through walls.

As he passed, he motioned to André Rott, who was just putting on his socks, to follow him, go for a swim with him, and with his thumb pointed upward, signaling that celestial persons had ordered something very important.

And Rott knew very well who the celestial ones were in this instance.

The young man’s protestations were in vain, he begged them not to take him to the hospital, he had had this problem many times before, in the Gellért nobody paid attention to it, and in a little while everything would be all right.

Of course everything would be all right.

He should not worry.

Just a little dizziness, that’s all he feels.

His head nearly split with pain; that was the truth, a sharp throbbing pain that sometimes remained stuck in his brain for days, making him vomit a lot of the time, but he kept quiet about this because the doctors could not help him anyway.

See, he can stand up already.

Whenever this happened to him, all he wanted to do was walk out on the world or hide at the bottom of abandoned mouse holes and shut out every bit of light. But Rózsika, the ticket taker, with her blood-red beads, her thick neck layered with rings of fat, pushed him back down, did not let him sit up; she had the same kind of blood-red beads on her massive wrists and in her small ears.

They rattled softly with her every movement.

You, now listen to me, my child, you may have a concussion. Don’t ever forget that, my sweet Jani.

And that means you must not move.

Everybody knows that.

I’m just telling you so you won’t forget it. You’re lucky you didn’t split your head on the faucet. I can hardly believe it; you missed it by a hairsbreadth when you fell, my God.

She followed them, she walked with them across the inner courtyard with the plane trees, and when they stopped for a moment she would stroke the young man’s limp hands, arms, and shoulders, his marble-pale forehead. The stretcher bearers stopped and changed direction several times under the storm-beaten wet trees, discussing loudly to which building the physician on duty had asked them to take the patient. All the while Rózsika whispered in a voice sweet as honey that he should not be afraid because she would not leave him, she would go everywhere with him, she will take care of everything but absolutely everything.

In the ice-cold wind she gathered the thick hand-knitted sweater about her, and the strangest thing was that in the following years she kept her promise. To the general indignation of her friends, colleagues, and relatives, she did not leave the young man, and they learned that the young man clung to her no less ardently once he left his little fiancée for Rózsika.

For a few steps the cross-eyed chief attendant also followed the stretcher in his white short-sleeved shirt and his white trousers tight as a drum on his paunch and buttocks. His wooden-soled slippers clapped along as they walked. He was turned back by the security people streaming in from the steam bath to take up their observation posts around the pool, in the corridors, and at other important points of the building as required by the presence of a high-ranking visitor.

Of course Wolkenstein, known here by his Hungarian name, János Kovách, could not see any of this because a moment earlier he had finally had the chance to take his chilled limbs and disappear behind the sailcloth curtains, where hot, unadulterated medicinal water gushed freely from the shower heads in great spurts, smelling like rotten eggs, just as it burst forth from the thermal spring. He shampooed his gray head, rubbing it pleasurably, and then did the same to his substantial limbs, which over time had grown a little heavy; he worked up a foam, his strong hands gliding as he massaged himself while over the gurgling water he sang at the top of his voice.

Ágost, however, did hear from the other end of the corridor the relentless ringing of the telephone call looking for him. He was quickly getting dressed in his cabin. He thought the Lukács cabins were disgusting, smelling of various bodily exhalations and of the insecticide scattered everywhere against cockroaches. He had no intention of waiting for the others; he wanted to decamp alone. He had had enough of them and of this morning. He’d had it up to here with their insipid political arguments. He did not understand why these men, so full of hostile sentiments, could be his friends. He felt anxious, though he knew he could not afford to. Their opinions did not differ, really, yet they could not be reconciled. He could not imagine what he would do with his unhappy life, which was probably unsuited for happiness. They should spare one another all this awkward strutting about. Waste of time. He was bored with everybody always having to have a different opinion, why does the world need different views. He had no sensible answer. And the wind was knocking about outside. They never got anywhere with their opinions. The wind raised the mist and blew it about; gusts of air continually lifted, perturbed, slid across, and bared the surface of the water.

There was now no one in the men’s pool except two closely watched persons.

Ágost was firmly convinced that man was not a political animal, that was too flattering a definition, but a chattering animal. And where politics are not made but only endured, as was the case in this cunt-size country, where only servants and gentry prattle, there’s no point in opening one’s mouth to debate political issues.

How could they have suspended their argument if this conviction of his so infuriated both his two friends, albeit for different reasons.

While the storm raged unabated above the pool André Rott tried to remain one stroke behind Karakas, who spoke to his subordinates only when he reached the end of the pool. On the opposite wall, the big hand of the electric clock impassively kept clicking away on its axis.

Another hour went by; it now showed 11:20.

Any number of people might accompany Karakas on his early- or late-morning wanderings between the steam bath and the pool. He could instruct his underlings as he pleased — to let him have a towel, not that wet one, the other, the dry one, to give him his swimming cap or take away his bathrobe or, after a few years of suspended activity, to renew the construction of the Budapest subway or to start an equally large project. With insiders like André he would discuss strictly confidential matters that in the life of every state belong in the category of destructive secrets. He would also see petitioners, at least those whom his always invisible security men allowed to meet him. And there was always — or there would have been — a procession of famous novelists, well-known radio reporters, eminent scientists, successful actors, and high-ranking officials who sometimes waited for long weeks to see him, here in the Lukács, for the hope-filled moment, for the great opportunity. They hoped to reach the influential man with their irregular requests outside his office, and they always held in reserve a small favor they could do for him in return. They would want a passport; a higher place, reserved for the more privileged, on the list of those permitted to purchase a car or be allocated an apartment; a starring role in a movie or a play; a reprint of their rightfully forgotten novels or a new publication of their selected poems; an appointment as an ambassador or clemency for someone in jail for life. Or they just wanted to gush and brownnose, to buzz around the influential man and fawn. Which is such a wonderful feeling that one could practically faint with joy. The lucky ones would shudder for hours afterward when they thought about what they had said and what the man had said to them, recalling their chance to talk with such a powerful personage. They would boast breathlessly to anyone they could collar, eager to strengthen their position with this exceptional bit of news.

Karakas would not even listen to most of the insidious and cunning suggestions offered in exchange for favors. He despised these people, all of them, these worms, the choice bootlickers and ass kissers, though sometimes, mysteriously mimicking God knows what and making especially nasty remarks, he would be generous enough to accept a clumsy act of some service; he simply bought them.

The lucky petitioners would be beside themselves with joy.

And later, they could not recount these great acts of heroism, since betrayal and bootlicking had generally accepted limits. Yet keeping quiet about them was fearsome, as if they’d regressed to being bedwetting little boys, now with a little pleasure in their loins or anuses.

Today, however, the powerful master had arrived at an unusual time and remained alone.

Perhaps he needed André to avoid feeling so alone or to feel the privileged magnificence of his loneliness.

Perhaps he wanted nothing from André.

It was good to have a strong man by his side who was not an ass kisser.

Karakas was a mysterious man, nobody could see his cards. It was impossible to tell whether he was siding with the inveterate dogmatists, the Stalinists, the Muscovites, or the dispersed but still vengeful hordes of ÁVH men — in which case his helping various nationalist groups was only an illusion — or the other way around. Perhaps with all these possibilities or despite them, he was trying to maintain, in his Anglophiliac way, some kind of political pragmatism, in which case his common sense was breathtaking. Except for his wife and children, no one thought he had any feelings or emotions, or wanted to share them with anyone in the cause of political action.

He was a basically uneducated man, but once his glance strayed onto something he would note it for good and sense its essence; with lightning speed he would read everything and anything, and understand it.

He was uniformly characterless when it came to his face and his physique. Smooth as a well-sucked lemon drop, his enemies said behind his back, inside and out everything was licked down. He exuded the aroma of some strange soap or not too pleasant cologne that reminded one mostly of mothballs. He spoke to everyone in a conspicuously low tone, with a cordiality both threatening and threatened, frail and vulnerable; he never raised his voice. Perhaps he never lost his temper because in reality very few things interested or touched him.

Although this morning he had received two pieces of terrible news.

The one concerning the mass disaster reached him a little after 9:30. An overhead streetcar cable had snapped in front of the National Museum, killing a number of children — students being taken by their teachers to the celebration — who happened to be crossing the street. And that was not all. Because of some fatal fluke, the snapped cable did not trip the fuse at the big power station on Váci Street; in all probability the still-live cable made contact with the streetcar track, which hungrily conducted the electricity further, and the bodies of the victims had started to glow and smolder. The high-voltage current killed quite a few of the shocked teachers, fellow students, and passersby rushing to the aid of the children, before all the eyewitnesses realized there was absolutely nothing to be done, and they began sobbing and screaming at the top of their lungs in the stormy street where traffic stopped and became hopelessly congested.

In response Karakas ordered a full military and police alert throughout the metropolitan area and a total news blackout; he caused all the roads leading out of the capital to be blocked, public offices and institutions closed, no trains were allowed into the railway stations and no trains were allowed to leave the city. To the president of the state radio, whom he had to treat with kid gloves because she was the only female member of the Political Committee and in that capacity under the personal protection of comrade Kádár,* he suggested maintaining calm and discipline.

Considering the last days’ reports on internal affairs, provocation could not be excluded, he whispered in his most cordial voice over the telephone. He was talking to her on the special line that, at least in theory, was safe from any kind of tapping or interception, and told her that as the result of his consultation with comrades of the highest echelon only a little while ago, those were the proper guidelines, calm and discipline, and everyone concerned should follow them.

She should therefore recall her reporters; no radio personnel or vehicle could remain on the streets.

This is a sabotage action.

He can assure her that this is not his personal opinion.

But not to worry, any possible disturbance will be nipped in the bud, that is the authoritative assessment.

And then he hung up without saying good-bye. He had no time for this priggish hysterical female, about whom the generally accepted view in the highest circles was that she had already lost her head on the evening of October 23, 1956.

She retreated to the space under her desk and issued her orders from there.

Karakas mobilized larger forces to reestablish order at the critical site so that the official celebration could commence, if not exactly at the announced time at least with no more than a half-hour delay, precisely because of the planned radio broadcast. He reported again to the prime minister, who happened to have comrade Kádár in his office. The two men got along well, even though they came from very different social backgrounds and held diametrically opposed views.

They were both slow and jovial, but while the thinking of one was very simple, bordering on simpleminded, that of the other was very convoluted. They listened to the secretary’s report attentively, and with a seriousness appropriate to the situation, and then comrade Kádár opined that comrade Karakas would need the help of a few comrades well trained in carrying out operational tasks, and all of them together should hasten to the scene of the disaster to aid the comrades there.

Karakas had the swarming groups of onlookers and passersby first dispersed by these helpers, then followed and cleared from the nearby streets. He had the windows of buildings giving on the Museum Garden closed; he ordered superintendents to chase everyone away from behind the closed windows. He acknowledged the list of the dead and injured. He ordered the sound crew to play, at the highest possible volume, lively, energetic patriotic songs. While ambulances, firefighters, sanitation workers, and electricians were doing their best, cursing and getting in one another’s way, the entire area resounded with a medley of music — stately palotás dances, wild verbunkos or recruiting dances, and rowdy drinking songs.

He made one mistake. He judged correctly that the schoolchildren, who had been brought from nearby schools and were now forced to wait behind ropes, might be upset by this feverish activity, the quickly spreading news and rumors, and would find it hard to endure quietly a ceremony scheduled to last an hour and a half. It would not be wise to add mass hysteria to the catastrophe. So he ordered that the children should be taken back to their schools but not sent home until further notice.

They should be replaced with other children brought from other schools.

The square had to be filled with celebrants; workers’ militiamen should also be ordered to the square, but in civilian clothes.

The police officer to whom he gave the order did not dare remind Karakas that there were no other children available, since March 15 is a school holiday everywhere in Hungary.

In the Spanish Civil War, Karakas had been adjutant to the current Hungarian prime minister, then the International Brigades’ dreaded commissar of political security. Before 1950, when the prime minister came home for good, they had carried out several well-coordinated cleansing operations together, though sometimes they were not even in the same country or city, and thanks to their mutual support they had managed to be left out of every cleansing campaign and operation since; this did not generate much confidence in them among their dearest friends and best comrades. They were friends, yes, if there were reason to make such a judgment. Yet the same comrades against whom the two had conducted these tough campaigns for decades were the ones who arrested them.

This was no laughing matter. Karakas was nearly tortured to death during his interrogation.

Although he limped because of an injury received in Spain, he suffered from several organic diseases as the result of the later beatings and torture in Hungary. About these he spoke with no one except physicians at Kútvölgyi Hospital; thus no one knew which of his inner organs had been smashed. A number of people knew that Vladimir Farkas had personally urinated into his mouth, as he had done to comrade Kádár too.* But others reacted to this by saying, no, that’s simply unbelievable.

He was considered a communist who could not and indeed did not have any personal grievances. Today, however, he remained conspicuously quiet, almost fearful; he did not say a single word to André Rott in the stormy pool. Neither did he look at him when, having reached the end of the pool, he turned around. As if he had forgotten him or changed his mind, and then his silence or fear acquired a diplomatic character.

He must have a reason for softening up Rott.

But in fact he was enjoying the water, the storm, and it gave him a special pleasure that he was enjoying it after a double ordeal and shock. Anyway, Karakas was a man who was content with small amounts of enjoyment; a few spirited movements were enough for him, he was satisfied and done.

They swam like this for about six minutes, from one end of the pool to the other and then back again. This was no small torture for Rott. Being an excellent swimmer, he found it very hard to swim slowly. But Karakas swam as if his fear of drowning at each stroke was not completely baseless. And then, unexpectedly, after a turn, he waited for André. While both of them trod water and held on to the railing, he said to the younger man that yesterday the Political Committee put an end to the matter.

The Jews are not allowed to study the Eichmann papers we have.*

Surprising.

We prefer not to have Israeli detectives around who are charged with special missions.

Obviously.

Let them give us the date for when the trial begins, and a few days before that they’ll get the necessary papers.

Or at least copies of the necessary papers.

That would mean, André remarked, to give himself time to think, that the memorandum about the extradition is also canceled.

The Hungarian government will not request Eichmann’s extradition, because rejection of such a memorandum would not be desirable. At the moment Moscow does not want to make a big deal out of the Jewish question.

But we shall offer them appropriate documents that may be important to the Jews, and in exchange they should keep quiet.

Maybe not just any documents, and mainly not all of them.

Then they swam for another four minutes.

Which, this time, was not part of the obligatory theatrics of male power play.

André wondered what this powerful man’s intentions were for sharing this confidential information with him.

At this late morning hour, Karakas gave no sign of special anxiety or perturbation, and Rott could not have heard of the terrible accident.

When Karakas, cold and wet but very content, had returned to the parliament from the garden of the National Museum, he first made his report, which was received with satisfaction. But the moment he stepped out of the prime minister’s office he was given some news that had no official significance, but from which he had to sort and rearrange documents on his shiny desk for long minutes to recover.

Finally he got up, very irritated, and in unusually harsh tones told his secretary that he’d be back in forty minutes; until then he could be found in the Lukács.

The secretary’s concerned look followed him out.

He had ten minutes left for the steam bath.

André Rott accompanied him there too.

In the dim hall, dating from the Turkish era, there were only a few naked figures.

Karakas and Rott took their place in the farthest corner of the hot-water pool, sitting on underwater stone armchairs pitted by sulfides and mineral deposits. Simultaneously, security men appeared between the columns and then withdrew discreetly, which unavoidably made for much slipping and knocking noise in the hall. Karakas, holding on to the carved armrests, absentmindedly floated his paralyzed leg for a while, staring in front of him, but not at his pencil-thin penis peeking out from under his apron or his little testicles floating in long folds of skin, at nothing in particular, perhaps nothing at all, and then suddenly he immersed himself completely in the water. When he surfaced, seeking André’s face, he said, so far as I know, comrade Rott’s friends are not involved in any bad-smelling business.

One expects that much from one’s good friends, comrade Karakas, replied André Rott quickly, though with some reserve, considering the powerful man’s surprising statement.

It would be embarrassing if an ugly mole dug up the ground somewhere.

André added, without thinking, that he was afraid Lippay might be growing prematurely rusty.

Don’t be.

Luckily, Jancsi Wolkenstein is more patient.

I believe we’ll have to entrust him with a dangerous task, Karakas said, and as was the wont of powerful comrades, he made it seem as if he had not heard the warning about Lippay and the recommendation regarding Wolkenstein.

What’s your view, he asked quickly and sarcastically.

He appeared genuinely curious as he observed André’s features, now motionless with surprise. Of course he did not fail to notice that André feigned this surprise.

For once, two pros were talking to each other in this town. In the meantime they had both sunk into the rust-brown water up to their lips and were floating their bodies. It would have been impossible to talk more quietly or intimately. Which was necessary both because of the subject matter and because of the echoing bathing hall. Occasionally a splash could be heard from a neighboring pool when someone was getting into or out of the water.

The more dangerous the task, comrade Karakas, the more responsible one must be.

That’s right, comrade Rott, and then the glory won’t be small.

The timing is good, comrade Karakas, if I may say it like that, one can only approve.

Which in their professional language meant, if you ask me, perhaps it’s not too late. We can sincerely hope that our friend Ágost Lippay has not yet dug himself a tunnel underground and indeed is not a mole.

He would never have thought he’d be able to think of Ágost in such plain words, so that with such a simple falsehood he could avoid his own death sentence, or at least find a solution whereby he would not be the one to be hurt by the friendship among the three men.

He could not have imagined that the betrayal would be so easy, that betrayal was as easy as falling off a log.

Occasionally some dripping was heard somewhere, and then echoed loudly in the dark hall.

It wasn’t as if he were committing a serious betrayal for the first time.

But Karakas had left him no option. He wasn’t going to let himself be held uniquely responsible for this definitive solution. Or at least the weight of the responsibility would be shared. The undisguised strength of this little administrative certainty gave him a peculiar feeling. Not dizziness but raw joy. As if from the pervasive joy of perspicacity he was on the verge of fainting, feeling at once strong and weak. Like Faust, not only had he gained insight into the unmasked nature of the world, but he also proved to be more loyal than he had expected or hoped himself to be. A sense of his own grandeur was reinforced.

Because he was more loyal to the cause of communism and to his oath than he was to his friend, he was more loyal to his profession and his conviction, and because he succeeded in making this loyalty prevail over all his other feelings.

He was nearly choking with tears.

Which surprised Karakas. It was as if he had caught himself out.

At this moment, tiny cracks opened up on their faces among their various pretenses. They looked into the depths of their mutual source of joy. Another drop dripped from the dark, cold medieval cupola.

I betrayed him, Rott rejoiced to himself. And he rejoiced exuberantly, as if this had happened for the first time, as if in the past he had not worked a long time as a mole for the British secret service.

But that was an institution and this was a bosom buddy.

He had to utter the magic word to himself, because otherwise he could not have comprehended that betrayal becomes not a moral weight but a physical relief. And he can thank this physically rather repulsive male person for it, for lifting the oppressive burden of procrastination off his shoulders. There was no way back, he too no longer had any secrets; they had let him know that they knew everything about him that had been or could be known, he had no place to hide.

Like a crevice in a rock that remains open to the destructive light.

Karakas raised his eyebrows almost involuntarily, a sign of his wonder and amazement, and, to keep Rott from seeing this, made the most telling possible move: he ducked his head again in the hot water.

Oh, he did not wish to conceal himself; he wanted to spare Rott from his own shame.

At the moment of betrayal Rott was finding pleasure in himself, however, exactly as he had during his darkest inner struggles and amorous confusions, from which he had fled to secret drinking and solitary binges. Once again he broke free of terrible fears and trembling and of lovely childish delusions. In his childhood they had warned him that betraying someone was to throw oneself into a kind of moral abyss, caught in morality’s whirlpool, from which there was no way back. And once again it was proved that this was not so. I am the abyss; I am the whirlpool. He could be glad of this, because it was something he had known for a long time. A living person had become free of the burden of a friend once lovingly bound to him. Whom until then he had tied to himself, to whom else, and whom now he nevertheless set free, hoping for the liberation of them both. He could be thankful to providence. Let him go. The feeling, the knowledge offered a stronger pleasure than lovemaking because, finally, another human life was no longer tied to human organs, skin, smells, or gestures, and had no perishable juices.

He had to feel himself light, airy.

Now anything could happen.

He had nothing to do with him, and this suddenly rolled back and liquidated their common past. As if he no longer had any need for breathing, for anything, for eating, shitting, anything that earthly existence demands of a human being.

I killed him; and the sober phrase, the clear accounting, felt especially good because it was as if he were the sole possessor of this knowledge, even if meant that he had killed part of himself as well.

When after a brief yet substantial moment Karakas surfaced again, he said that Lippay’s mission of course had a rock-hard condition.

He laughed hideously as he said this.

He has to get married within a week so that he can travel in the company of his little wife.

As two tourists.

They will hardly need luggage.

It will be done. André nodded to this coarse man while keeping his expression, excited by joy, dutifully somber.

He was not happy to see the powerful man go so far.

But you, comrade Rott, will also have to create more orderly conditions in your private life.

And he sounded the same hideous laugh. Rott joined him, laughing at his own nonexistent private life, which the bathing hall echoed several times.

Even though Karakas would have preferred to sob and shout.

By now, he could see nothing on Rott’s face. Which did not fool him in the least. No stranger to betrayal, he knew from his own experience that Rott’s jubilation and fear were increasing as a spiral of self-gratification and self-admiration carried him away, with a phase delay.

Rott understood this to mean, however, that there would be appropriate blood money; he would get his promotion and that would be it. He’d have to get married and start behaving like a conscientious clerk, and to all appearances that is how things should be.

So that this perverted little asshole, this lousy turd with his pencil-thin prick, can have his revenge.

As if Rott understood that Karakas grasped all his ulterior motives.

And to snuff out the elemental joy of becoming pals and also to show who was boss, Karakas, with true manly affability, gripped Rott’s thigh under the water.

Comrade Rott will forgive me, I’ve had a tough day, I must excuse myself.

Contemptuously he let go of the strange thigh, motioned that he would take a dip in the cold-water pool, and their audience ended.

And Rott was free to go on his way unhindered, with his breathing regained in fear and trembling. He regretted that he would no longer find his friends behind the little green door. He felt especially sorry about the anticipated loss for Hansi. And he could not imagine how life would be reorganized between the two of them once the third member of their group disappeared for good. He was afraid that the two of them might not be able to bear the solitude, which he could well endure on his own. Karakas did not lie, he very rarely did, and he was indeed having a difficult day. He needed the cold-water pool, and he repeatedly immersed himself in it. The movements pleasantly numbed the skin covering his warmed-up muscles. Above the pool they were waiting for him with his bathrobe and various towels. He dried his head as he walked. The masseur stayed close behind him and continued to massage him with the rich material of the robe, kneading his back and shoulders while buzzing in his ear that comrade Karakas should really stay for a few more minutes today, take time out to see to his health because he could feel how knotty his muscles were through the robe.

They opened the cabin door for him and handed him his clothes item by item. A few minutes later, curled up on the deep seat of the large Russian limousine, the Zim, they sped him back across the Margit Bridge to the prime minister’s office. When they reached the ramp to the island, where the arc of the bridge rises to its highest point, he looked among the flat roofs of Újlipótváros for the roof terrace of Mária Szapáry’s eighth-floor apartment. Behind the high solid parapet, he quickly found the pale little light of the salon’s always-open glass screen. In time, on their way out, the policemen most likely had to close the door they had found open.

The reason he loved Mária Szapáry was not because in November 1944 she had saved his life.

It probably happened the other way around.

The woman must have hidden him in the big wall closet because she could not otherwise reciprocate his silent and persistent love for her. By then other people were hiding there too: Jupi, who had given him only his name used in the movement, a field officer from a very good family, and a Jewish engineer from the neighborhood. Later, Mária Szapáry spoke to her women friends about Karakas as she would about a loyal canine, very kindly. Which he also knew, because with her customary noble simplicity she called him dog straight to his face. Listen to me, dog, I want to come up to your office, when will you have time for me, you could do me a number of favors. I’ll go see dog about it, he’ll take care of it, he’ll smooth things over. I’ll talk to dog about it, I won’t go to see him, but sooner or later at some upcoming reception. Even if she had any interest in men left in her, what could she have done with such a shop assistant with his slicked-down hair.

Karakas had been ordered home from Paris for illegal work, but after the German occupation he was no longer safe, his false papers notwithstanding. The potential danger of his situation could hardly have been greater, but neither of them had a choice. He did not know what to do with the news of the red countess’s death. It pained him and made him sentimental. He wanted at least to see the apartment, if he could not comprehend his completely unreasonable attraction. In the last few years, he had been preparing for such a visit, as if he were threatening Mária Szapáry with it.

Yes, of course, I’d be very glad, please come for tea, we’d love to see you, anytime.

They had seen each other exclusively at public places, in theaters, at the opera, film premieres, or state receptions to which the countess was almost always invited officially because of her role in the resistance; sometimes she showed up to have something quickly taken care of, though since 1956 she had let Karakas feel that despite these meetings they would not retrieve their earlier harmony.

Of which neither of them wanted to speak.

To open the wall closet through whose sliding back panels one could gain the flat roof.

From there they reached the steel door of a more distant elevator shaft. When Mária Szapáry was taken away, that is where they holed up for two days and two nights, without food or water. They had to go out to the roof to shit and to urinate. And then they got to the street during the heaviest bombardment, when the front had reached the nearby streets.

According to the first police report, and this reached the highly placed man in the form of a verbal accounting, his secretary whispered what had just been communicated over the telephone, that in the early morning hours Mária Szapáry had taken Elisa Koháry out of the apartment, in a wheelchair, to the corridor, where she had earlier pried open the door to the elevator shaft, using a screwdriver later found in the apartment.

And what she was preparing to do must have been clear to the other woman too.

They also found crude material traces of her resistance and struggle and, given the sensitivity of the case, secured them.

She had pushed her into the elevator shaft along with the wheelchair. It made an enormous noise, and the neighbors heard a woman’s screaming, probably the hapless woman’s last shouts.

Despite the early hour, many people ran out to the echoing corridors.

They heard something, but the noise was actually subsiding; when it completely subsided they heard someone slam and lock the door to Mária Szapáry’s apartment, but they could not say whether it was Mária Szapáry.

With her strong deliberate steps, in her rope-soled Basque slippers she clattered across the hallway, across her workshop, out onto the terrace where now, at the ides of March, the flower boxes were still empty. She was as calm as if she had just let out a tarrying guest.

Indeed, that is how it was.

But a year earlier, when she for the first time had confessed to Mrs. Szemző, Irma Arnót, that this was it, up to here and no further, because she could not go on like this, she no longer had any reserves left for the woman, none, then Irmuska did not say not to do it.

They just kept sitting until it became light outside.

In the widest possible arc, she threw herself over the parapet.

Not to get caught on anything.

This Sunny Summer Afternoon

I don’t know how things had started between us, but Ilonka Weisz always waited for me here on this landing between the first and second floors.

I’d known her from before because she was friends with Viola and Szilvia. Sometimes she visited us in Damjanich Street and occasionally she came with us to City Park. But she would never talk to me, as if I didn’t exist.

Viola and Szilvia said this was because she positively detested me, that I shouldn’t be surprised if she looked right through me. And the reason they could not make Ilonka Weisz change her mind was that whenever they were close to softening her heart toward me, I would behave callously again. They had to endure my insensitivity because they were my cousins, and one puts up with a lot when it comes to relatives, but I shouldn’t expect Ilonka to tolerate it. And they asked me confidentially to stop behaving so callously, at least with her, even if I went on being callous with them.

I would have been glad to comply, if only I had understood what they were talking about.

I was amazed at them, at how they could prattle all this nonsense to me while Ilonka Weisz sat on another bench, dangling her feet and pretending not to know what the girls and I were talking about. This is how people talked in Damjanich Street, and this sort of talking was understood in Dembinszky Street too, but I had a lot of trouble with their words. People there used different words and actually behaved differently from the way people did on Stefánia Boulevard. I could not imagine what callous behavior was or what I should do so as not to be callous. I also didn’t understand why on earth anyone should be softened, or what was meant by softening her heart toward me. Steel could be softened; or we say that cheese, water, or a spring breeze is soft. To soften a person implies that the person first is hard. Ilonka Weisz wasn’t hard, just a common little girl with a big mouth.

Except she detested me for some reason and that was pretty confusing. Her detestation was attractive in a way, but I didn’t know what to do with it.

On Stefánia Boulevard, one would say to something like this, well, that’s her problem.

The change might have occurred one day when she was coming from her lesson just as I was going to mine, and to my huge surprise I saw she did not detest me so much. She said something to me or, I don’t know, maybe she asked me something, and I answered her politely. I didn’t understand why she had changed so suddenly. Before that, she’d turned her head away whenever we met by chance in the staircase or on one of the landings and then, to be sure I had no doubts about her feelings, she’d make a face to show me that my sheer presence disgusted her.

Or maybe they had already planned what they were going to do and that’s why she was friendlier, out of plain calculation. From then on she always had something to say about the piano teacher, the lesson, Szilvia and Viola. One day she said I should go up to their place after my lesson because her mother would be going to work then.

The piano teacher gave her free lessons, and she practiced on the teacher’s piano because they didn’t have their own.

Because of all the beds in their apartment, they couldn’t fit in even an upright piano, Viola said, and they didn’t have the money for it either.

The image of the congestion in their apartment scared me and did not make me want to go there, though she repeated her invitation many times and always added that she would be alone.

Come on, Szilvia said, they’d have plenty of money for a piano if only they knew how to economize. The reason we have money for everything is because Daddy makes sure every penny goes a long way.

They squander everything, I’m telling you, they’re a bunch of spendthrifts.

But we’re telling this only to you, confidentially.

We’d never say this straight to Ilonka, not for anything in the world.

The truth is they haven’t got enough money to rent even a lousy old upright for her.

On the Stefánia, no one would have said anything like this. And if the girls talked so arrogantly and conceitedly about Ilonka Weisz, then why did they call themselves her best friends.

It always seemed to me that Aréna Road was a real border between the two sections of the city. On the other side of this border, one did not understand many things.

There were three siblings in the Weisz family; Ilonka had two older brothers, Ernő and Dezső, famous hoodlums in the neighborhood who avoided school, but Ilonka was considered such a great and brilliant musical talent that the piano teacher could not let her go to waste. Many people in the building had a great respect for the piano teacher; they called her an unselfish soul. True, the boys lugged up wood and coal from the cellar every Friday afternoon for her, and their mother scrubbed her floors during the spring and fall cleanings, thus giving proof of the family’s gratitude, but the boys showed absolutely no interest in Ilonka’s piano studies.

Neither did her mother, she just let it happen, if it had to happen; she had enough troubles of her own.

I did not talk to anyone about these things, but Viola and Szilvia told me about them along with many other matters. They gave me the impression they never stopped prattling. The moment one of them stopped the other continued, and sometimes they spoke over each other’s words so that I couldn’t understand either of them. I learned important things from them about everyone; without them, I wouldn’t have found out where Ilonka Weisz lived.

When she came from the piano teacher, we met on the landing between the first and second floors; their third-floor apartment opened from the rear staircase. After a while she stopped asking me to go with her to the third floor after my lesson.

One time she said, I am so alone. But I couldn’t go with her, because anybody in the building would have seen my secret. After her lesson she went down to the mezzanine, crossed the courtyard, and from there went up to the third floor by the rear staircase.

People also called the rear staircase the maids’ stairs.

Another time she said I was callous, since I wouldn’t listen to her when she complained of loneliness.

Szilvia claimed she would rather die than have to use the maids’ stairs to go home.

She hadn’t finished saying what she wanted to say and Viola was already annoyed.

Sure, you’d die; come off it, why this foolish talk. Why do you have to make such a tzimmes over the maids’ stairs.

Szilvia began wailing that she didn’t know who was talking more foolishly, but if you really want to know, you’re making the bigger tzimmes.

And would Viola talk so casually if she had to share a toilet with strangers.

Of all the foolish nonsense; somebody, please hold me back. You’re only saying that to protect your sweet little Ilonka.

They were talking as if each of them knew in advance what the other one wanted to say and lost interest the moment she said it.

I don’t remember seeing maids in this building. One recognized maids from far away. I explained this maids’ stairs business to myself by thinking that Ilonka’s mother must have been a maid once, and the name somehow remained stuck to the stairs.

When I told my grandmother about Ilonka’s existence, about the girl whom the piano teacher taught for free and let practice in her own apartment, my grandmother nodded and said that was a very decent thing to do and we too might help the girl by buying her sheet music.

She’d write a letter about this to the piano teacher and give me the money to take to her when the time came.

Somehow I tried to protest, saying that no one had asked us to do this.

I was terribly ashamed of my grandmother’s eagerness and sorry I had told her about it. I told her the story only so I wouldn’t despise Ilonka Weisz as much as she despised me.

Grandmother looked at me severely.

She asked what sort of help I thought was help that had to be asked for. What makes help really help is when we give it without being asked.

But I sensed this wasn’t going to turn out well. Ilonka would detest me even more because of this. And then I had better tell my grandmother what I did not want to tell her.

I asked her if it mattered that Ilonka Weisz detested me.

She said, why shouldn’t it matter, of course it did, it mattered very much.

Then let’s not buy her sheet music.

She did not reply for a long time; she was thinking. It’s impossible to buy someone’s empathy, I was right, we should not give the impression that that was our intention. However, we were talking about two different things and they could be separated sensibly. With this gift we would show our appreciation for Ilonka’s talent. Grandmama would solve this problem in such a way that Ilonka wouldn’t even know about it. And I should somehow make her stop detesting me; I should also think seriously about what I might have done to offend her.

Still, I hoped Grandmother would forget about writing the letter. She and Grandfather always laughed at themselves for forgetting so many things.

But she did not forget, and on her nice butter-yellow handmade letter paper she wrote to the piano teacher, to whom we should be very grateful for her decent behavior during the Hungarian Nazi era. Grandmother had said she would make an arrangement with the teacher in such a way that Ilonka would not know about it. She did not seal the envelope, because she didn’t have to hide the contents from me, but still I didn’t dare look at the words describing the terms of the arrangement she was making. Here was another word, another something I didn’t understand, which people sometimes used to specify what they had agreed, or how they had decided to leave things at that. The term they used was that that, but I could neither memorize nor understand it. I didn’t quite understand the word maids either. The piano teacher had a cleaning woman but she didn’t have a maid, though in her apartment there was a tiny maid’s room in which nobody lived. My grandparents had a maid, Rozália Török, but it would never occur to anybody to talk to her the way my aunt Irén in Damjanich Street and my aunt Erna on Teréz Boulevard talked about their maids, whom they often had to dismiss.

Such a stinking beast, Szilvia would say, and despite our mother’s good intentions we couldn’t keep her on.

And she made a haughty face that perhaps disturbed me more than the word beast.

My grandmother always told me I should be attentive to Rozália. Or she would reprimand me in no uncertain terms for irritating Rozália and warn me not to do it again. I should be more considerate and polite to her than to anyone else because we owed her so very much.

When with her friends they talked about their maids, she always said, well, Róza is a treasure.

And one evening, looking up from the book she was reading, she told Grandfather that she was amazed not so much that we were still alive but that providence had chosen to guide such a soul to us, and it was because of her that we’d survived.

Whenever they talked about this, tears welled up in Grandmother’s eyes.

And she’d say that goodness always makes me shed a few tears.

For a long time Róza went with me to my piano lessons so I wouldn’t have to cross dangerous Aréna Road by myself. When twice a week the time came to set out, I’d feel I was leaving my grandparents’ house forever. I did not protest, but the finality of the act hurt me in advance. Stefánia Boulevard vanished in City Park at the horizon of infinity. And how far away was the incredibly wide Aréna Road; I couldn’t even begin to imagine how far. As if on each occasion one were swallowed up by a foreboding: this can’t happen again, ever. My school on Hermina Street always seemed within reach even when I walked there alone, while Damjanich Street or Teréz Street seemed halfway around the globe. Yet we always managed to reach it. On the way the sun shone on our heads or it was cold, the wind blew, and the air had a certain quality that I had to overcome with every step but couldn’t. It was dense or too rough; we walked within it as though we were making no progress at all.

Whenever I felt like this, it was no use holding on to Róza’s strong hand. But I tried not to let her notice any change in me.

This was the last thing I wanted to talk about with anyone, the air, because I saw that the air did not hinder anyone else in any way, maybe they didn’t even feel the air resisting their progress.

People were downright glad of it, positively cheerful, that they could be moving.

Róza would simply grab her large kerchief and run.

Grandfather would begin to whistle, the dog would start fooling around, scurry to get his leash, ready to go, and Grandmother would hail her cab as if going to conquer the city.

Something was going to happen to us.

I was afraid of everything that might happen beyond the high fence around our house.

Things were a little better if we took the bus, which we did when making jam for the winter, cleaning windows, or doing the wash did not give Róza enough time to walk with me. Then the bus instead of me had to overcome infinity and all those things in the air that hindered me. Then it was easier to believe that I might soon return time.

The bus was always crowded.

This bus, the number 37, had one of its terminal stops at the corner of Kerepesi Road; it went to Erzsébet Square and from there over to Buda. It reached our stop jam-packed. In the evenings I saw it go by empty among the dark trees. Its passengers were from Kőbánya or country people from the train station. If we wanted to get on, we had to squeeze between strange legs and bellies. The pressure increased at every stop. Everybody wanted to get on but nobody got off and the conductor never stopped yelling. Róza could not protect me from the pressure of strange bodies. Adults could hold on because they were tall enough to reach the straps, but I was being rattled, blind and deaf in the midst of living flesh and powerful odors.

I also had to be sure people didn’t knock the sheet music out of my hands.

Yet whenever we walked, I could not help telling Róza that it would be better on the bus.

Getting off was simply impossible. We had to get off at the corner of István Road, but sometimes we couldn’t. Or getting off required merciless pushing and shoving forward, which I could not do without feeling ashamed of myself. People around us were yelling at the top of their voices, the conductor could not calm them down and Róza yelled back. They pushed and I had to push too because I couldn’t let Róza do the fighting alone, I used my elbows, stepped on feet, and kept kicking so that they couldn’t kick me.

After fighting our way free at last, we stood on the empty sidewalk like agitated battle-weary animals, panting and exhausted, arranging our disheveled clothes. Our anger and agitation subsided slowly.

I said next time we should come on foot.

That was too much for Róza.

She sputtered that I should make up my mind about what I’d like to do. One can’t do two things at the same time, and I was beginning to get on her nerves.

I could never be cautious enough to avoid provoking somebody’s anger or dissatisfaction.

Standing in the middle of the sidewalk she was yelling that hadn’t we had enough crazies for one day. She certainly had, and it was time I pulled myself together.

I also noticed that the more cautiously I spoke or the more cunningly I phrased what I had to say, the more offended and irritated people became. They never had such problems with my cousins, even though everyone said I was a much better child because I wasn’t as impudent and violent as they were.

It was hard to remain good if my best behavior wasn’t good enough.

They had grown used to me as a child who did not look for excuses, was not obstinate, quickly acquiesced in whatever was asked of him. Perhaps my grandfather was the only one who did not want me to be better than I was. He was indifferent to my behavior, good or ill; he did not want anything from me. Sometimes I thought he also pretended that nothing touched or interested him. Just as I always had to pretend that I had no objection to anything. They always wanted more, demanded more. But there was someone inside me who made giving in very difficult; it was some sort of obstacle, I don’t know what or who it could have been.

I wanted to give in, but because of this being I could not.

Maybe that’s why my cousins accused me of being callous.

Yet I could not remove this last obstacle from the path of my goodness.

Because I was already too polite, too quiet, exceedingly considerate, and attentive. It was as if I were mocking them, and that made me feel insincere and wicked.

Even if they were most satisfied with me at times like this. But I knew that no matter how much they praised me, how much they stroked me, I wasn’t like that. And I was often close to the brink: one more glance, one more word and I might have revealed that I couldn’t go on; I felt dizzy, as if I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for a long time. Of course they noticed nothing, which made the play I was putting on for myself even sadder. I had no hopes that in the hereafter I would not be such a giddy person, since my fate would be less false; at least I’d be able to understand more of what I couldn’t understand now because of all the falsehoods. I feared the promised great punishment, namely that the only world I knew would one day either slip out from under my feet or come crashing down on my head. They would unveil my dishonesty or suddenly discover that I wasn’t satisfied with anything. Viola and Szilvia could do anything they wanted, and even Ilonka Weisz could go on with her roguery to her heart’s content.

At least she had a mother who defended her when necessary, who lied and raised hell for her and then slapped her around.

I, on the other hand, had to be grateful to my grandparents and other relatives that I could stay with them at all. That they didn’t eject me from their lives. And I had to do my own lying. Occasionally my grandmother saw through me, took pity on me, and helped me lie to the others. But I also saw through her. She helped me with the lies simply to keep me from not loving her, and then she could be even stricter with me.

I barely remember the two years that preceded Grandmother’s final success in reclaiming me from the boarding school on Rózsadomb. Yet the tribulations of those two years determined my so-called good behavior. Because they might always send me back there again — the hour of truth might arrive at any time — and then I’d once again cease to exist. If I don’t behave no one will protect me; I can’t be a burden to people. They’ll take away my name again, the name that my grandmother’s enormous efforts had managed to retrieve in some office where they did not treat her as well as she’d expected they would.

And I remembered this situation clearly; it felt as if I were recuperating, as if the throbbing noise of a high fever had just subsided. The problem was not that my classmates and teachers — all the latter were women — had a hard time acknowledging my new name, but that frequently I myself didn’t know which one was the real name. My old name felt more familiar, felt more like mine, even though I knew it was only a name given to me by those gangsters who had dragged my father away from Aréna Road, my father whom nobody has ever seen again and of whose name they wanted to deprive the world.

I remembered well that day on Aréna Road, because they let me watch from the window as they took him away.

Grandmother got me back from them and retrieved our good name too; she said she’d paid a lot of money for it, a great deal of money, since she had to bribe many crooks and scoundrels. Still, the family name and my real first name lay on me like a curse. It was hard to accept that my new name was, in fact, my old original name, because I no longer remembered that in the boarding school on Rózsadomb they had given me a different one.

I had to learn the old one again, that this was who I was, after all.

I didn’t know how long I’d be allowed to remain as this one, or when it would be my fault that I’d have to be another one.

I mixed up the two names frequently enough.

Instead of my real old-new name, the old one kept popping into my mind, the one that wasn’t my name at all, regardless of how the others in school yelled at me and laughed, saying, this little idiot can’t even remember his own name.

I suspected that besides that name of mine, I might have not remembered the boarding school because they had mixed me up with someone else, and in reality I wasn’t the person they or even I thought I was. By mistake my grandmother may have taken away another child, thinking she was taking me. I tried to feel who I was, whether I was really the person they thought I was. I had the definite suspicion I had been exchanged for someone else, I was someone else. But they mustn’t learn of this, so they won’t be disappointed in me, since they’ve accepted me so nicely. Or at least they pretend to have been taken in by this lie or sham. I must be on guard; I was terribly ashamed of the deliberate, premeditated deceit. Perhaps they knew what an enormous mistake my grandmother had made and they said nothing about it because they wanted to spare her.

I must make myself unobtrusive or at least useful, if I can’t be completely unnoticed and useless.

That’s why I didn’t care about the shooting, I was going to get bread. At last I could prove my usefulness. I saw how my aunt Erna feared my disgusting cousin and her famous husband, so I chose, unlike them, to behave as a grown man should and went to see about getting bread for all of us. They willingly believed that I was brave and self-sacrificing since that was safer and more comfortable for them.

Ultimately, I was as self-seeking as they.

That is why it hurt me whenever, on either Damjanich Street or Teréz Boulevard, either in the midst of huge quarrels or coldly and pitilessly, they dismissed a maid.

They would say the maid had not proved worthy of their confidence.

At times like that I felt it’d be better for me to find a fast-acting poison among the cleaning compounds and do away with myself. Or this was the reason that Grandmother’s words about Róza filled me with hope, since she was the great exception.

I couldn’t imagine where those dismissed, unwanted maids would go.

By the same token, where would I go, where would I find refuge for myself, or find a way to evade my pursuers.

One day the adults were sitting on the balcony of the Damjanich Street apartment, under the white sunshade, and I was staring out among the flower boxes at the trees on Queen Vilma Road bathing in the sun.

It was late afternoon and down in the Moszkva Garden the waiters were busy setting tables, dishes and utensils were clattering, the band was tuning up for the five o’clock tea. Large striped sunshades were lowered over the tables with hand-operated winches; they cranked them exactly as they did on Margit Island in the Grand Hotel or the casino.

Five o’clock tea was a strange expression, because it did not mean that people had tea at five o’clock or that this was a salon de thé, as Grandmother and her lady friends called the pastry shop; it meant that dancing started at five o’clock.

That’s what I waited for.

At ten after five, when they had finished their second number and there were a few people still sitting at the tables, everyone started to clap and shout when Hedda Hiller appeared on the little stage, which was almost completely hidden from me by the leaves of the horse chestnuts. She began to coo, hum, drone, buzz, and purr into the microphone in her deep mellow voice, and occasionally she’d sing out a crude tune with unexpected force, and lots of twists and turns and halftones; and she appeared each time in ever more wondrous dresses.

My aunt Irén was carrying on behind me about the girl she’d fired the day before, as if the scene she’d made the day before, which we had had to live through, was happening again.

Pack your bag, dearie, and get out of here. I give you five minutes to get your things together. Where could I go now, sweet madam, in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, and she had the nerve to call me sweet and say it was the middle of the night. Please let me stay until I find a new place. Go, stay under a bridge for all I care, my angel, anywhere you want to, but make yourself scarce, get lost.

Grandmother quietly asked Irén whether she had really sent the maid away like that or upset herself like this only afterward.

If only she could be trusted.

Grandmother had come to take me home with her and now here she was, confronted with this story that visibly shocked her.

You don’t think I could possibly have stayed another minute under the same roof with such a creature.

Her voice receded from me on the balcony, along with the sound of the band tuning up, as twilight slowly approached. Then it became completely dark and although I heard the drums, trumpet, saxophone, and piano as they were looking for their correct positions in the ensemble, I was on my way to somewhere where things were not so musical.

Luckily they never found out why I fainted on the balcony.

They said the little fool must have stood in the sun for hours again and they shouldn’t let me do that in the future. I was too sensitive a child, which of course was understandable. Dampened cloths were put on my forehead and chest, and for a while longer I lay there at their feet on the warm stones. He always waits for Hedda Hiller, would you believe, and for some reason they all laughed at this remark. They always laughed at my enthusiasm for the singer. Then they lugged me inside, I let them, though I felt I had nothing wrong with me, I could have made it on my own two feet. They laid me on the sofa, everyone stood around me and I could see on their faces that they felt they had to do something with me or for me. Szilvia and Viola took turns running into the bathroom; they were in charge of changing the compresses. Grandmother fanned me with a newspaper; my aunt Irén took my pulse. The only unpleasant thing was that this sunny summer afternoon was pouring in through the many floor-to-ceiling windows, together with the jazz band music.

Hedda Hiller was crooning something about love into the microphone, then said a few words that made the men and women in the Moszkva Garden laugh, and then the saxophone kept wailing.

They asked if I felt better, because now my color was coming back.

I said I felt really good, though I had no idea how I felt.

They asked if I hadn’t eaten something on the sly that might have upset my stomach.

I said I thought there was too much light in the room.

Did I understand what Irén had asked me. She asked me if I’d nibbled on something.

I said I understood, but still there was too much light in the room.

But they were asking if I had eaten anything before lunch that they didn’t know about, whether I could remember what it was.

I said I hadn’t eaten anything before lunch, I remembered very well, and I didn’t take any pastry from the serving table.

That calmed them down but I was afraid I might faint again; I was afraid of myself.

I kept insisting — not that the air was filling up with something — but that the light was becoming unusually dense. My grandmother drew me to her, as if she’d sensed what was happening to me, and said, no problem, darling, the girls will darken the room right away, and with that, she may have kept me from fainting again.

It felt good when they finally shut off the light.

Let’s leave him alone for a while, Grandmother whispered, he’ll sleep now.

And I did feel as if I had to fall asleep.

But the moment they left the room on tiptoe and stopped making the floor creak, I opened my eyes. They had closed the double door leading to the dining room; the room became dark. That reminded me again of the night, the bridge and that girl, who was me, having to sleep under the bridge.

But why did they lie to us the next morning, saying she had left of her own will.

I felt that I was born to be a girl.

There was always a truth that later turned out to be a lie.

The feeling that I was not who I imagined myself to be, and not who others thought I was, always tormented me. Actually nobody is what he or she appears to be, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t know who he is or to whom he belongs. I observed the torments of others; I wanted to understand how they decided when they had to lie and about what, or what it was they could consider the truth for a while. That was the reason why I later so obsessively followed the half-man trundling himself down Teréz Boulevard on his board with casters, since no one knew where he came from or where he was going every day, or the woman with her big hats and no face left, nothing but a walking burn.

As if by watching them I could crack their secrets.

Since these two were so obviously not what they appeared to be, it never occurred to me that they might not have any secrets. And since I could never shake the thought that my father surely couldn’t have disappeared without a trace as claimed, and our mother couldn’t have just left us — that too had to be a lie, and something entirely different must have happened — it followed that these two, the man on the rolling wooden board and the burned woman, were my father and mother. My mother had survived the war, though she’d suffered terrible burns during the siege of Budapest. And my father had heroically stuck to his truth, and when they saw they were getting nowhere with him and were unable to force false testimony from him about anyone, they simply threw him out of a speeding car.

He was like a living piece of flesh. He could just barely crawl away from where they dumped him.

A stranger took him in, with whom he’d been living ever since, somewhere around Hunyadi Square. It would be nice if Hedda Hiller were that stranger. Since I couldn’t decide what would be better for me, sometimes I imagined that the kind stranger was a man — a more convincing version of my story, since a woman couldn’t have carried the wounded man to her place.

His legs could not be saved. The truth was that in their condition neither of my parents wanted to be a burden to us.

That’s why my mother kept hiding from us, that’s why she pretended when looking out from under her large hat that she didn’t recognize me. I also tended to avoid her because I could not imagine the moment when she’d give up the playacting, take me back, and press me to herself for the first time. I was scared that I might push her away because she had become repugnant, because she had left me, and because I really hated her.

Of course I suspected that this woman, whom I sometimes imagined was my mother, was among those who were crushed when the marquee of the Duna Cinema crashed down. Probably not one of those whom the rescuers scraped out alive from under the rubble after the dust settled and everyone was sobbing, fleeing, helping, or only helplessly screaming and watching the incredible. That would mean I’d lost my mother for the second time. Later some good people carried the corpses to the corner of Antal Nagy Street in Buda, and then, at the cost of subdued altercations on top of the rubble, the line for bread re-formed itself.

They lay side by side where the tank had appeared earlier.

People in the line slowly kicked the rubble off the curb.

The chaos was too great, and I never saw her again on the boulevard or anywhere else.

Somebody said that the marquee was made of cinder blocks, which is why not more people died, since it’s much lighter than regular concrete.

I preferred to continue weaving the story for myself. In my story she was taken away with light injuries by a Russian military ambulance that showed up for the injured. She recovered in a few days but had no doubts that I’d recognized her, and that’s why she left the country in the last days of December, along with other refugees.

My imagination protected me from the pain somewhat, although the more cleverly it worked, the more doubts accumulated in my mind.

I stood there on the landing above the second floor, leaning against the wall, bent forward a little, my legs slightly apart, like someone preparing to throw up but hoping not to soil his suit with his vomit; I was waiting for my imagination to calm down, so that jealousy and senseless physical desire would not drive me mad. I held my unbuttoned coat together with my fists sunk in my pockets. As if afraid that someone on the dark staircase might see what was happening inside my pants. I was clenching one fist hard to keep my fingers from stretching out, from crawling onto my painfully rearing hot cock, to keep my warm palm from closing around it.

But I could not deactivate my imagination. For that I would have had to scrape the pictures off my brain cells. And since I couldn’t do that, there I was all alone with my cock. And they were doing it in their warm bedroom. I saw not her eyes but a single flash of her eyes, a single flash of your eyes, the sadness of her closed lashes, your sadness, her thinly arched eyebrows and naked shoulders. But I had never seen her shoulders. I was not the one who had seen them, but, together with me, this hateful man had. I wanted nothing more than to open my fly in the cold staircase of this familiar building so I could come together with them.

The pain was somewhat mitigated by my imagination, but only gratification could have expelled the tormenting pictures.

If I could do that, I’d be ready for any disgraceful act, that’s what I felt.

And why should fate save me from disgrace.

What I have done until now, along with my stupid scurrying around and my stupid enthusiasm, has been disgraceful enough.

But one can neither deflect oneself nor hold oneself back with self-inflicted moral judgments.

No humiliation can frighten one away from committing ever-worse disgraceful acts. As if a raw desire for pleasure was saying, no matter what you do, your disgrace can still be increased, only make sure you don’t drown in it.

I knew they were not going to come down again.

Maybe Ilonka Weisz would come, said my imagination.

Nobody came.

I opened my fly, not hurrying at all. The way one prepares for a premeditated revenge.

Potential danger always sharpens the sensation of pleasure, I don’t know why that is. With the booming of the wind in my ears, blood pulsing through the cracking and snapping of the gutters. This was the voice of fear, desire, and trembling. In the pulsing of blood, I expected to hear the opening of the door on the third floor, the sound of their light footsteps on the patterned stone floor of the staircase, their chatter, their wrangling, their sensual banter, anything, even their amorous cooing. I was sure they weren’t coming, but I could do nothing but keep on waiting for them. And now waiting not only for Klára but, though I didn’t notice this significant and involuntary change, for Simon too. And if they were to come, I’d surely have enough time to flee silently from them, out of the house.

I’d go to City Park, that’s how I imagined my escape.

Out there, in the storm, I’d betake myself among the wet trees.

Until then, however, it was as if I were cowering at the bottom of a dark lair, waiting for my prey and ready to pounce.

I was cold and I was hot, but I did not dare execute the last movement on my open pants. Another bus went by; the empty courtyard echoed the rough sound of wheels dancing on cobblestones for a long time. My hand kept pawing the slit in my pants, perhaps to move on, perhaps to be ready to button it up again. The yellowish sky was shining above the roofs. There was no light at all in the Weiszes’ three windows on the fourth floor. I thought that Ilonka Weisz must have grown into a beautiful girl in the meantime. The first was the kitchen window, the other two those of the one room.

By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one’s expectations crashing down. There was some noise from the second floor, followed by a laughing female voice. I paid little attention, the usual sounds filtered out from a kitchen, but I quickly buttoned my fly. Then I heard the piano teacher’s door open, but it was immediately closed, very quietly.

I didn’t understand that.

Maybe it was closed from the inside.

Then for a long time nothing happened, the wind kept booming. And when I was certain that only my useless waiting would continue, and while I heard the pervasive patter of women’s shoes, someone turned on the pitiful staircase lights. It barely made a difference, but it was a little less dim around me. My first urge was to flee. Like a miserable bug. She called after me; she called me by my name in the echoing staircase.

I wasn’t sure I’d managed to finish buttoning my fly. I froze, as if naked; I looked back and her voice made me happy. I hoped my coat covered everything. Suddenly I had many things to say and to ask. How did she know my name, but in my shame my heart stopped beating. It was as though she could see not only what I had done but also what I would have liked to do. And she was standing there, at the top of the stairs, in a long fine fur coat, shining like silk, and I saw she was nearly bursting with her triumph.

I would have asked her but I didn’t have the courage — or enough air.

She raised her gloved hands lightly above her head as though playfully asking, with a modicum of self-mockery, aren’t I wonderful, and what have you to say about this transformation, and isn’t the fur coat wonderful too; look how nicely it falls when I spread my arms like this. She raised her head as if wearing a crown, and look, what a wonderful hairdo, created all by herself. It surely was wonderful. My wish had come true. The most wonderful thing was that she so easily transformed herself; there was no end to the surprises and transformations. I forgot everything; I forgot all the anger and shame of having had to wait, and they dispelled my presumption about what they had been doing in their bathroom or bedroom; I forgot all my accusations.

Her beauty made me forget my entire meaningless life.

I did notice, though, how unsuspecting she was, how preoccupied with herself or with something I could not have known, and therefore she did not care what was happening to me. As though she weren’t interested in that or not interested in me. I was only some odd decoration on her completed life. But I had to forgive her for this instantly. Nothing could possibly have happened to me that would be of any interest to other people; I realized that right away. I had nothing to complain about and I had to keep my joy on a short leash too, lest I become overexcited by something that might disturb others. I had learned that I could not burden people with my feelings and, having no choice, I made myself believe I was indeed someone who not only wanted to avoid being a burden but who positively tried to please everyone at least a little.

And it seemed that in her own play she had cast me in a role that called for my presence but did not cramp her style.

She was wearing black antelope shoes with incredibly high heels, and under the fur coat a tight-fitting unadorned black dress at once soft and tight, which left her knees and thighs exposed — shockingly so by the prevailing standards of good taste. Her snow-white neck, her legs shining in their stockings, and the power of her knees and thighs were her jewels. Her strength was her most conspicuous feature, showing how strong that body was, carrying the proportions of her strength as some kind of armor. Her maddeningly blond hair, now done up in an utterly new coiffure, was her jewel. The glittering of her eyes, her plump lips painted blood red were her jewels. I wouldn’t have dared touch her lips, though I wanted to take them into my mouth, I ate them, I reveled in them, and they threw me into terrible confusion.

It had been in the air already that women were wearing short dresses, but until then only a few had dared to go this far, and right away I worried about being seen with such a striking woman. Although I had never seen a hairdo like hers, it reminded me of someone, I didn’t know whom. Not knowing somehow felt good. I would have started up the stairs for her, but I took only two steps because of another struggling impulse within me.

She would sweep me off my feet if I touched her.

I was left with words colliding into one another, a stammering, which happens usually when one is trying to do something against all odds.

I asked where she was coming from.

And she latched on to this, to the raw words, as though in doing so she could rescind the exaggerated gestures she had made.

She said, what do you mean where from, where could she be coming from.

And how did she know my name, I asked. It’s a pretty insane thing, but actually I had never introduced myself.

How does she know. Well, she knows everything. In other words, she knows what she wants to know or has to know.

She started down the steps like a scheming prima donna. She must have seen someone do this in a movie or something.

Indeed, we hadn’t been introduced, so perhaps she couldn’t talk to me now.

But she was quickly embarrassed by her revealed beauty which she had just shown me. Her temperament proved weightier and more somber, so she was able to ignore the fact that she had already shared it with me.

And where did she leave Simon.

She said, we’re going without him, because suddenly something cropped up that he had to deal with; he was furious, ranting and raving, would probably break everything in the apartment. Can’t do much damage, though, they have hardly anything. This time they had a really terrible row, they weren’t talking. Until tomorrow for sure. If he wants to, he can come after us; if not, he can stay home and then he’ll drink himself under the table.

He’ll throw up; she’ll have to wash everything he’s wearing.

While her words echoed impassively, bouncing dully off the stained, filthy walls decorated with graffiti and bullet holes, she kept coming down the stairs as if to demonstrate that she was granting me the grace of her approach in well-apportioned doses.

She made me feel like a stupid little kid.

I said I’d told Simon that I’d known this house for a long time.

I asked her if she knew the Weisz family, did she know Ilonka Weisz. Because while I waited I had plenty of time to check the list of tenants, and it seems that almost everybody still lives here.

Protecting herself from my childish flood of words, she laughed. Then, slightly taken aback, she asked what Weisz family, what Ilonka, and she was sorry she’d made me wait so long but she’d thought I was sitting downstairs. They hadn’t lived here long enough to get to know everybody in the building.

Of course, I continued, and I’d be happy to tell her about it one day, but now I had something more important to ask: how was it that she came out of the apartment on the second floor when they lived on the third floor.

Because a friend of hers lives on the second. And was I a police detective. To interrogate her like this.

She couldn’t have thought that seriously, and I asked if her friend was renting a room there.

This really got her going. She protested, why should her friend rent just a room; she lives there, it’s her own apartment.

But my old piano teacher lives in that apartment, Andria Lüttwitz.

There were no more steps for her to take during these superfluous sentences, because now she was standing right next to me on the step above. She flooded me with her fragrance. I should have stepped back, but I could not make myself do that and stayed put like a dumb obstacle. Nor could I keep myself from touching her fur coat, at least with my fingers.

I said, this is mink, as if voicing a professional opinion, and my hand remained where it was.

She responded quite vehemently to my movement, as if she had been waiting for it; she put her gloved hand on my arm.

Yes, it is certainly mink, she said quietly, as if revealing a secret, and how did I know about furs. She borrowed it from her friend because she’d seen that her spring coat had bothered me.

Because of me, I asked, alarmed.

You’re right, it’s not a very attractive coat.

I asked how she had noticed, what sign of mine had she read, and I was ashamed — but she could not reply because suddenly I shouted out, now I know, now it was clear what had been so familiar.

It was Andria who had done her hair.

Yes, she did, but how did I know, and she asked me to go back to the second floor with her and bring the drink bottles she had left there.

That’s what she said, the drink bottles.

Only Inches from Each Other

How did I know, how did I know that Andria also had that same hairdo. Nobody but Andria has hair like that.

Not only that, I also remember, but exactly, how such a hairstyle is made. Because, I admit, I liked Andria’s hair a lot. First, the hair at the top of the head is combed and then backcombed in the other direction.

Sometimes my cousins helped her because they loved digging their fingers into her hair. My role was to hand them the hairclips.

Andria’s hair is really beautiful, she said evasively, as if she’d been suddenly interrupted. And did I know what had made her turn so gray.

It felt so good talking to her that I impolitely ignored this question and kept on talking, saying that the girls, my cousins, also took lessons from her and were much more accomplished than I.

I had to stop taking lessons, unfortunately.

She was swaying her head, smiling at me as if she could see back into those strange times, and saying that I must have been a very peculiar boy.

My hand, longing for a touch, was still sunk into the warmth of her fur coat; her gloved hand was still resting on my arm. It was as though we both were paying attention to this — how some strange power was flowing from one into the other — and noticing how reassuring it was. And as if we both were talking the meanwhile just to keep ourselves from noticing how important this was. At the same time signs of bewilderment and aversion were deepening on her face. She was glowing and smiling, yet she seemed to be receding. I spoke faster, hoping to stop the sun from setting.

I asked why she thought I had been a peculiar boy. I didn’t remember that there had been anything peculiar about me.

Because boys in general don’t notice or remember things like that, they rarely help out by handing hairclips to someone, and they don’t usually say they like gray-haired ladies.

All right, I said, but Andria was different, and the whole thing is much simpler than this. I spent a lot of time among women, since my grandmother and our maid raised me. Grandfather would only take me for a walk, at best. By the way, he usually brought me here, to City Park. I have hardly any memories of men, had no chance to be with them. That’s why I observed things that other boys might not. Or I don’t know, I was always more interested in girls.

She laughed at this; of course there’s this certain Ilonka Weisz. If I told her more about her, she could see better just what sort of boy I must have been.

I got scared; this was an embarrassing subject. I would have liked to crawl onto her bare neck when she threw her head back as she laughed. Between her sparkling wet, beautiful teeth I would have crawled into the dark hollow of her mouth. She had teeth like a wild animal’s. But her laughter seemed more like an excuse to remove her gloved hand from my arm. I also had to withdraw my yearning hand; I spoke even faster, lest the mutual withdrawal become too conspicuous.

I said I knew something about furs because my uncle had a salon downtown, furrier and fellmonger, that’s what people in the trade called the business, but since they took his salon away he’s been working at home.

Fellmonger, she repeated the strange word.

Furrier too, I explained, perhaps this mink is from his business. I explained that what Budapest parlance calls mink is in fact the name of an innocent animal. There is something inexplicable in this whole fur business, and I probably thought about it only because I had an aversion both to furs and also to this uncle of mine.

So what should one think about when one says mink.

Minks are living animals, and wearing a coat like that is like having committed a robbery and being proud of it.

She interrupted to say that my uncle must have been a Jew.

Indeed he was, I said. Actually, he still is, but that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t stand him.

We both laughed hard at this and our mingling laughs echoed for a while, but that did not please me much.

My jocular mood began to dissipate. It seemed we were offending this miserable dark building with our echoing laughter.

Our laughter probably disturbed her a little too. Hurt a little.

Let’s go, she said, seeming disconcerted.

All right if she wanted to, I replied, but I’d like to know why this was important or interesting, interesting from what point of view.

Why wouldn’t it be interesting, she asked. Everything is interesting, so is this. Just as it is interesting that she is a Catholic apostate. That’s something of interest, isn’t it.

Perhaps she’s right and everything is equally interesting. Still, it’s also interesting that she was interested in this in particular. Because she could have asked so many other questions. She could have asked what was the color of my uncle’s eyes and I would have willingly answered, black, my uncle has black eyes or brown, which is to say I don’t know, I don’t remember. Or she could have asked whether he had a mustache or was he bald, and I would have answered, yes, my uncle is bald, has a small trimmed mustache and a disgustingly hairy body, and he stinks from his furs and leathers.

She doesn’t understand why I’m so irritated all of a sudden.

I am not irritated at all.

Then she doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say. She doesn’t understand what I am insinuating.

She thinks I’m the one who should do the explaining.

No, I don’t have to explain myself. She’d be happy to answer all my questions — but hopes this won’t keep us from starting out.

Prevent or not, I replied sharply, that depends on what kind of explanation I get.

This strong emotion that could not be concealed attacked us from the outside, and it paralyzed us both.

Why is she asking me that, of all things.

Out in the courtyard the wind was making loud noises.

We were both angry and agitated, and we looked at each other with alarm; actually we were looking out, searching for whatever it was in each other that was causing our inability to endure each other’s words for another moment. This was something neither she nor I could give up, let alone terminate.

Let this business end right now, if it has no chance, if nothing good can come of it.

I should forgive her, she said angrily, but she’d really like to go.

I’m afraid it would hinder me in many ways if I don’t get an acceptable explanation.

Right now I was the one hindering her, if I hadn’t noticed.

In what way might I be hindering her.

In my free movement, she answered with a little laugh. But, believe her, not for long.

I laughed back. Only until I get the explanation. She should consider that the condition of her freedom to leave.

She was afraid I had a persecution complex. She was afraid that I had to overcome it on my own. How could I have thought for even a moment that I’d be able to stop her, that I could be violent with her. Did I dare imagine dictating conditions to her.

We were standing on the stairs in this cold, dim, filthy staircase, and the whole thing no longer had any sense, purpose, beauty, or charm. She wanted to go but she didn’t, because she didn’t want to offend me by pushing past me, leaving me high and dry. But I thought — for who knows how many times that evening — that I shouldn’t stay, despite the alluring promises of happiness, I shouldn’t stay with her, not even for a moment, no.

If I stayed, I’d be engaging with an impossible and unpredictable monstrosity, I would seal my fate forever.

Not for a single day could I endure that other man’s company.

She had begun the same game with me that the two of them had been playing together for who knows how long.

And even if I could put up with him, what would I do with my own lie. How could I correct it, make it right. Even if I confessed to her that I wasn’t studying at the School of Physical Education, what reason could I give for lying to her in the first place.

A lie I couldn’t sustain. Yet I could not tear myself away from it either, and every moment, whether we were talking or not, pushed me into something or shoved me on to something that was mine and also belonged to her, and these two could not be separated.

This something had no external signs; more correctly, I saw her looking for it in my face, on my forehead, my scalp. Her gaze rested on my shoulders as if at any moment someone might chase this something away. And I did the same in the same restless way on her naked neck, on her heavily painted lips, on the hillocks of her breast, on her shining knees and beautifully arched feet.

Our glances ran on rapid courses but they did not find what they were looking for, always finding something else; they found the beauty of another, strange body. Why should I have to swallow her remark about Jews. And I grew even angrier because my cock was sticking to my underpants. There is always that one fat drop of seminal fluid that bubbles up, smeared at the top of the foreskin, and then it doesn’t matter that the erection subsides, the smeared drop acts like glue. I should reach for it, pull the underpants away from it. I can’t do that without drawing attention to it. And my anger at this frustration somehow linked up with my anger at her words about Jews.

This is a Jewish neighborhood, yes, and this is a Jewish building, why did they move in here if they didn’t like it.

What did I want from this insensitive young lady from the country.

She should have swallowed my little insult of not letting her get past me, for I was acting with her exactly as her uncouth husband would have. There was something unpleasant in the parallel; I couldn’t tolerate it, and she couldn’t either. Selfishness was whimpering, I want to be left alone, to break off, to put an end to it. At moments like this one forgets one’s screaming, shrieking loneliness. I’d rather have no one. Our shared and desperate anger must have stemmed from this, because she was crying out against me and I against her. I was protesting that I very much wanted something of which I knew nothing. I wanted her but did not know who she was, and how is it possible to want a person; I didn’t know that either.

Then you’d better go. I finally stepped out of her way, let her go.

At the same time she must have reached the opposite conclusion. She’d rather surrender; she’d give up the game, whatever happened.

She said I shouldn’t be angry but she couldn’t tell me everything in one go. However much she wanted me to know, there was a terrible sense of decency that would not let her, or maybe it was her terrible Catholic upbringing. She is a good Christian girl from a good family, and this should never be forgotten. She admits that her question was unguarded or inconsiderate, and she understands my sensitivity, believe her.

I cut in, saying that we weren’t talking about sensitivity.

All right, so it’s not sensitivity, it doesn’t matter. There’s really no need for us to talk like this. If there’s one person I shouldn’t be afraid of, it’s her.

I’m sorry I spoke so harshly — and I heard my voice sounding more frightened than I actually was.

What surprised me was that I didn’t accept a single one of her sentences as true; I gave her more time, but in fact I wanted to challenge every one of her words.

Come on, she called back quietly. We can’t do everything all at once, let’s take our time. We can tell each other everything calmly, without getting upset. She gave the impression that in our deadly embarrassment she thought we were simply striking out in all directions.

That was true.

For lack of anything better to do, we took off; we had become like a defeated army. Her glitter was gone, her heels pounded hard on the stone stairs. I let her walk in front of me; as she was going down I saw her a little from above in the pale-yellow light; she moved as if she were being made to drag her discouraged limbs across an infinite desert of grief and mourning. All this was familiar, streaming into me like blood and aching, aching terribly. As if, with waning strength, she had to make her way from one place, where despite her hopes she had found not a mite of goodness, to another unknown place, and to do this without knowing what was in store. I didn’t understand where we were going or why in hell we were going anywhere. No, she is not hoping for anything, but I felt as if that too was my fault. If I didn’t go with her, if I didn’t accompany her, if I didn’t protect her, I would suffer damnation.

Yet what I felt was not empathy for but frantic curiosity about her.

Her beauty was gone, though I wouldn’t say that her being was any the less touching and engaging. As if the pores of her skin had suddenly shed the powder covering them, the lipstick had turned into foreign matter on her lips, the borrowed fur coat was hanging from her shoulders as from a hanger, and her stupendous hairdo showed mainly an effort to be eccentric. She became gray and crude, bare and undistinguished, depleted and needy. When she had first appeared in Andria Lüttwitz’s fur coat at the top of the stairs, she had shown how dazzling she could be. Now I could see how empty and futile her attempts at strutting and showing off were.

I also noticed that the leather on the heel of one of her shoes was torn and crinkled. That often happens when the high heel of a shoe like that gets stuck in a damn grating, hole, or crack. Her body was emitting rebuke. And I kept staring reproachfully at her shoes. She was waiting for something, she was hoping very much for something, and again she did not receive it. It was as if I had to sniff the air to learn her desires. Her fragrance was the only thing that had really changed.

I followed her and despised myself for this.

I became her servant. Ten minutes earlier I hadn’t been her servant. Why do I wind up serving everyone I meet.

We were inundating each other with blame and rebuke; we almost drowned in them.

I asked if she’d noticed that she had already used the word deadly twice this evening.

She did not reply but made a tiny movement that generated a series of other movements with which she once again managed to dazzle me. She just barely shrugged her shoulders and looked back at me with a single sharp glance. I’m talking nonsense. Then she grasped the coat collar with her gloved hands and raised it a little, maybe so from that moment on I’d see nothing but absolutely nothing of her neck, nothing uncovered, and she quickened her steps. That was her reply. That is how we crossed the stinking entrance to the building; that’s how she stepped out ahead of me onto the street, where the wind was raging even more strongly.

She clasped her arms above her head to protect her hair. The long fur coat opened and as she took off its two wings fluttered lazily behind her. Much as I disliked furs, I had to admit I was enthralled by how the soft, uniform longitudinal patterns rippled down her back. That’s how her own body became the image of an animal’s body. Then suddenly she stopped at the curb, turned to face me, I almost bumped into her, and we found ourselves only inches apart in the lashing wind. I had the feeling she was completely naked. I hadn’t counted on taking the car; I thought she’d lock it and we’d get on the bus. Her full, powerful, yet somehow still little-girlish body was straining toward me as from an opened shell.

It was straining forth from the opened shell of animality. I couldn’t tell how many transformations she had gone through that night.

The wind blew her fragrance into me with renewed strength, her new indecipherable fragrance.

Almost nothing kept me from slipping my arms under the shiny lining of the shiny fur coat and pulling her body against mine. Now she was flirting with me, inviting me, luring me, opening herself up like a seashell, like a deep-brown chestnut.

We were shouting and screaming in the wind, which felt especially good because it was as if we were throwing sounds into each other’s laughing mouth.

Not to let the wind blow them away.

She asked, actually she screamed whether I’d dare trust her with my life.

Not willingly, but without hesitation, I screamed back at her.

Because she didn’t have much experience in driving, which is to say she had no experience at all, she screamed, and for the first time in my life I could smell the scent of her mouth — lipstick, her sweet saliva, and the cleanliness of her flesh.

But I hoped she had a driver’s license.

She laughed, she’d managed to get one, but just barely. She had seduced at least three policemen for it.

I screamed congratulations, I screamed that I’d be happy to die with her.

The street around us took wing and was swimming. The shining arc of the roadway spread over our heads, the worn facades of old buildings fluttered and rose, the heavy sky slipped under our feet.

She turned the words back toward me, yelling them into my open mouth; yes, she too would be happy to die, in bed, among pillows, but not on the street.*

Her fragrance I caught not with my nose, her screaming not with my ears; they assaulted my groin directly. I had nothing to defend myself with. Because now it turned limp, now it hardened a little, sperm kept dripping from the constant pulsing.

Don’t, please don’t talk like that, I beg you, and my screams no longer vibrated in my vocal cords or touched my throat but burst straight from the rising and falling depth of my chest, from the throbbing flesh of my heart.

How shouldn’t she talk. She laughed, she laughed at me and screamed, in what way not talk.

I am scared, I screamed.

And that put an end to the laughter; she nodded that of course she was scared also. The brilliance of her eyes shone through every darkness for a long moment. She could see everything, both my future and my past. The wind had whistled, howled, pushed and lashed at everything while we were still in the stairwell; it had besieged the city with renewed force. There was before me a face clouding over and a body thrust toward me. I saw everything too; it made me dizzy. I saw how forlorn I had been for close to twenty years without her, and now this would end. I felt immensely sorry for myself, for my passing forlornness, as a child would, heartrendingly, pitifully, tearfully, helplessly. As if not daring to leave my desolation; this was odd, quite odd. And the dizziness vividly reminded me of that long-ago moment when, not far from here, on the balcony of the apartment on Damjanich Street, everything began to go around, slip away, become distorted, and heaven and earth slipped into each other. I didn’t want to, I did not understand why I was remembering an experience that did not belong here at all. And why is it interfering now. Why did I go limp because of it. She too needed to lean on something, and that made everything even more improbable. What I felt inside I could see on her. She was no longer protecting her hair with her arms; she leaned lightly against the car and I thought that in response to that positively inviting movement I would swoon at the sight of her.

To keep this from happening, as if grasping at words to rescue myself, I said, screaming, that I’d like to tell her something. I was actually breathing into her because I felt I could not wait any longer and I was ready to own up. I’d tell her about my earlier lie right then.

No, I shouldn’t tell her anything now, she didn’t want to hear anything, she shouted into the wind very rapidly and sharply. She was in fact scared that something irrevocable might happen.

And with that, either out of giddiness or because she was tearing herself away from my effective range, she thrust herself from the car, knocking against me slightly, her knee flicked mine, her breast brushed my chest, she spun, went around the car, and tore open the door on the driver’s side.

She must have anticipated something very different from what I wanted to tell her.

All I wanted was to confess that I was going to a teachers’ college and not to the School of Physical Education; I had lied to her and didn’t know why and she should despise me for it, guard herself against me and forgive me. I wanted to throw myself on the ground before her. But probably she didn’t feel like listening just now to an idiotic confession of love.

She misunderstood my confusion, my determination, and the fervor of my words.

If I had wanted to confess my love to her, that would indeed have been out of place now. I don’t know why. The only proper thing to do was to stay with my lie.

I too tore open a car door, plopped down next to her, but saw on her face that now I couldn’t say anything, because everything had changed again.

Just the two of us, at last, locked in the car, having managed to lock out the insane whistling and clapping of the wind, and this felt meaningful, promising. Yet our misunderstanding had created a new situation; it was as if we’d both stumbled and fallen over each other. Which put me in an uncontrollably good mood; I laughed. And not least because I’d spared myself, or at least deferred, the unpleasant admission, and that gave me a satisfying advantage she couldn’t possibly understand. She must have dreaded something else entirely, expected something entirely different. Somehow all this was there, in her, all at once, in her bewildered wide-open eyes — an unexpected heavenly gift for me. It meant that I had not misunderstood anything; yes, she loves me, she is waiting for my confession of love, though the moment I open my mouth to make it she’ll reject it.

Well, she shouldn’t hold her breath waiting, nor did she know what to make of my laughter.

She looked away abruptly, hurt, turned on the light, and began to fix her hair in the rearview mirror, to smooth out her lipstick with the tip of her tongue. She had to balance somehow the advantage my baffling laughter gave me. It was strange to see how quickly she became busy with herself as a means of escape. As if she were saying, no, she would not surrender her independence even if she’d wavered a bit, not to me, not even for a moment.

Which did not mean she didn’t love me; it just meant not now.

Still, she couldn’t keep quiet; the tension was too high and somehow she had to find a way to reduce it.

Would I mind telling her what I found so funny.

I could assure her it was not her hair, or her, but the situation.

It wasn’t necessary to reassure her, because she was not upset, but what situation did I have in mind, or whose situation.

I said she was probably expecting something entirely different from what I actually wanted to tell her.

She asked what it was I wanted to say.

You mean I can tell you now, I asked.

Why not.

You weren’t so agreeable just a little while ago.

Out with it, I had her permission.

But now I couldn’t tell her. First, she should tell me about this great transformation, and then I’d think about it.

That’s really a very generous offer on my part. It means that what I’d wanted to say was, after all, exactly what she’d thought it was when she’d kept me from saying it.

No, that wasn’t it. I wanted to tell her something she could not possibly expect to hear.

A surprise.

Most likely.

And now we’re going to play twenty questions.

No, I don’t think so.

Because she wasn’t in the mood to play dumb games. She sees that I like to take life easy. I could do anything I want with my own life, but I’d have to do it without her, not with her.

I said it would be better if we stopped talking for a while because I was afraid we were only hurting each other for no good reason.

Then at last we once again agree on something, she said.

What I don’t understand, I said, is why she has to quarrel with everyone in this kind of tone.

First, she isn’t quarreling. Second, what do I mean everyone.

I don’t mean to interfere with her life, but I do have ears and eyes, I can hear and see that she talks to her husband the same way, and she doesn’t speak differently to the men in the shop either.

How touching it would be if I was going to protect her husband or the men in the shop from her.

I said I was protecting myself, not your husband, I asked whether she could hear her own voice. And how does she know, how could she know, the suppressed shout burst out of me, how I like to take life, easy or otherwise. I can tell you, I am not taking life in any way. And how would she know what kind of life I used to have or what kind I’m having now.

She didn’t know, she answered quietly, almost frightened. But I could no longer restrain my anger.

And why do you insist he’s your husband when he isn’t. Why this lie, why this game of hide-and-seek. In the list of tenants in the lobby and on their apartment door, I saw her maiden name. Anyway, if she had a husband or if he were her husband, she wouldn’t behave like this with me. Couldn’t she see how common she was. She wants to use me to make that miserable man jealous when he’s about to explode with jealousy as it is.

No, that’s not so at all, she said patiently.

I wasn’t listening, I just kept saying what I wanted to say, that she’d lied, telling me he was her husband, so I wouldn’t have high hopes.

No, that’s not so, she kept repeating more and more quietly. One cannot tell everything all at once, it’s impossible, she said, fiddling absentmindedly with something on the dark dashboard.

But it would be much better to tell somebody something instead of constantly evading things or, excuse me for using such strong words, lying.

I am making a mistake, I am wrong. It’s not like that, not like that at all, I am wrong.

Well, how and about what, that’s what I’d like to know, what am I wrong about. And why is it impossible to tell everything at once. If she wanted to, I would tell her everything, all at once. Or twice.

I shouldn’t shout and mainly I shouldn’t mock her.

But I am shouting, why shouldn’t I be shouting in my own voice.

She leaned on the steering wheel with both arms and ran her fingers over the dark dashboard. I didn’t dare look at her straight on, and she wasn’t looking at me. Or maybe she had already forgotten I was there. That wouldn’t surprise me, because I myself had no idea where we were or what was happening.

What one managed to say aloud gained enormous weight, but the things one could not possibly utter became even weightier and more threatening. I felt that now I could tell her, all at once and in a single sentence, my entire life and everything I had ever thought or was thinking now. There was this terrible, insurmountable entirety. There was no place where one could begin and no proper weight for it.

Still, somehow, each of us should have entrusted it to the other. Everything that could not be told.

She moaned that I was torturing her.

It was as though there existed one gigantic emotion and a tiny piece of it had chipped or broken off and I shouted that I wasn’t torturing her, with what would I be torturing her.

At the same time, my conscience was gnawing at me. I wanted to understand her, see her clearly; I was shouting and throwing accusations around because I didn’t have the strength to fight my way out of my miserable lie. What’s more, it felt good that I couldn’t, and instead I kept on with my insistent, domineering huffing and puffing, even though I was deeply ashamed of it all.

Why is it a crime, I shouted, that I want to see things clearly.

Oh, come on, those are nothing but big words, she responded morosely. Who’s talking about crimes here, and what do you mean clearly. She doesn’t know words like that. Anyway, how dare I use such words. She can see very well that what I want to do is get away with something. I want to avoid her. I had taken a deep breath and run after her, but what I really thought was that it would be better if she didn’t exist, that’s what I thought. And why would I think she can’t see through all my little tricks.

Why would she think I don’t see them myself.

That’s why she’d said before that I’d like to take life easy. That’s all she had in mind. I think that one can solve everything with words. And for my information she did not mean to hurt me. She really didn’t know much about my life, though she had heard a thing or two.

Then you could at least tell me how you know my name.

From Terike.

What Terike, I asked, surprised, I don’t know any Terike. And I noticed that we were staring at each other again.

And that again I saw she was phenomenal.

And that I had never seen anything so beautiful.

Terike, her boss.

And her eyes were roaming over my face, she was letting her gaze glide all over it without stopping anywhere.

And how could her boss know my life’s story when I don’t know her.

How could she know, well, from your own dear aunt, that’s how.

This I hadn’t expected, though I could have, because Nínó, always looking for her little girl, asked every woman she met who had a number on her arm.

Her face became a strange object in the dim light. A single patch of yellowish light fell on her nose and lips. Her innocent statement opened up a secret world in which people discussed one another’s lives behind one another’s backs. For her, this world was probably neither secret nor strange nor repulsive but familiar and natural. She appeared little-girlish or awkward in this world, and this must have been one of her transformations, which I had not understood until then. She could change her age even between two sentences. Now she was older than I, now she was like a child. I couldn’t easily imagine a world in which my aunt would talk about me to a stranger while another stranger eavesdropped. Although I knew that such a world existed, just as I knew that in the real world every sentence was an assassination and betrayal; but in the world that existed only for me, in no circumstance could a thing like that possibly occur. And with the help of these feelings, or thoughts, within a fraction of a second I had finally understood something about this woman, yet somehow I still didn’t know what it was I had understood.

I asked when and in what way my aunt had talked about me, how had I gotten into the conversation, and from where could her boss have known my aunt. But I didn’t wait for an answer; as though I dreaded her answer I turned away and stared out at the street.

The street was more familiar than her face was.

No, she did not think the two women knew each other from someplace. They like to talk to each other because they are about the same age. Her boss had a child very late in life. Sometimes they talk about this, sometimes about other things, about this and that, anything.

And I didn’t even know, I said, that my aunt frequented your shop.

Not only my aunt, she said in her lively, enthusiastic, little-girlish voice, but my older cousin too.

Meanwhile I was looking at the street, because for some reason I had to.

No, I said, it can’t be, she must be mixing him up with somebody else, because my older cousin has never in his life set foot in a store. Unless he was with my aunt.

She laughed and said I was wrong about that too, because he does come to the shop on Wednesdays and Fridays, always between four and five, and he always buys the most expensive dessert.

Dessert, I said. You mean to tell me my cousin buys dessert, I said. He had never bought a box of matches, let alone dessert.

But there must be something to this story.

And I kept staring steadfastly through the swaying, yellowish sphere of the lights from the streetlamps as if I had not the slightest wish to see this unknown woman’s face and was willing to hear her voice only from a distance. This lively, little-girlish, distant voice I didn’t know what to do with. She was talking to me from another world, and the image that Ágost bought desserts at that shop so he could court her was simply unbearable.

There was no woman who would want to avoid his gaze.

And the street was now commanding my gaze. As if I were slightly forgetting what we had been talking about, I too was becoming a bit lost. Or I longed to be lost, I don’t know. I began to long to be out of the car, to lean into the wind and to go home to Stefánia. To return to the country that no longer existed for me. To see at the far end of the garden the six high arched windows all lit up and, until Róza came to open the gate, to lean my forehead against the cool, lance-shaped pickets of the fence.

She asked what I was thinking about, or looking at so hard, or why did I become so quiet.

I said I was remembering something from my childhood.

I should tell it to her.

That’s it, I said, laughing, and went on staring out into nothing in the tunnel of the lights on Dembinszky Street. That’s exactly the problem, I don’t know what I should tell her about, because suddenly so many things were on my mind at once.

I had to look back at her; I asked whether she came from the country.

Wherever did I get that idea.

I didn’t get it from anywhere. I’m just asking.

But she is asking why does that interest me.

Because if she was from the country, then maybe I couldn’t explain anything to her. This is an idée fixe of mine that I had even as a child: that there was a border on Aréna Road and life on the far side of it was completely different from our life on Stefánia Boulevard. I asked her if she wanted me to show it to her. But suddenly I remembered that we hadn’t brought down those drink bottles from the third floor.

The Spice of Happiness

It was clear he was at the right place, and it was equally clear that he was in the grip of a peculiar feeling.

Perhaps happiness in love is what makes such a wonderful promise in the air made fragrant by vegetation.

It would have been foolish to be taken in by such a spiritual promise, but it would have been no less foolish to deny himself the exceptional and groundless feeling of lightness.

Dr. Kienast saw a solitary, one-story house in the forest, standing in the middle of a long, rather narrow clearing, all its windows lit up, and he had to goad himself to look so he could see, instead of being preoccupied with what he was thinking and feeling. It was as if he had strayed back into the same winter twilight. But where in the devil else could he be walking if not at the place where he happened to be.

Everything might have occurred once before.

In light moments or frightening ones when, who knows why, one is gripped by irresponsibility and suffused with happiness, one can easily have the impression that one knows the world by heart. And it wasn’t the first time he had experienced this particular hallucination. A little farther on in the clearing, he saw a smartly built wood-framed shed and, facing it, a handsome little structure whose use he could not guess. This was the fruit-drying shed in which, in Döhring’s dream, Isolde had found the hidden gold, and perhaps the oldest of the three buildings.

The beams and wide trusses of the wood-framed main building must have been repainted recently.

Kienast was laughing at himself a little; one tends, when nudged by an illusory feeling, to make daring discoveries regarding the inner nature or structure of the world that only a moment later may prove useless. In the silence of the foggy woods the noise of fine dripping could be heard. The air was still. And he could be truly content with what had happened in the previous two days. He had escaped, run ahead of himself, and everything was coming together very nicely. He reveled in the joy of discovery, though nothing was exactly new for him. As if he were someone arriving on this miserable muddy globe not for the first time and in all probability not the last either. It’s love again, that damned love, he sang the old song to himself.

Always and again, love, he had sung to himself — and whistled the tune too, to escape the stupid lyrics while traipsing along, going about his dark little criminal cases among unsuspecting people in the city, which was preparing for the holiday and already decorated with electric garlands.

And now he was standing before the unknown house, still whistling the same song, always the same song, and he will sing the same song tomorrow too. Although most of the things he was thinking about now he had not thought about before. Words like providence and muddy globe usually escaped his attention or failed to settle permanently in his consciousness. He had no penchant for rapture, no inclination toward mysticism, he found esotericism laughable, Nazi drivel, and he felt no special joy in secret correlations or in having exceptional thoughts. Neither his uplifting sentiments nor the volatile upheaval in his love life could make him smile happily. One really must not let signs of such things show. Still, he well remembered that just before his trip, when discussing the first test results in the lab and after he had handed over a few very promising pieces of new material to the lab technician, he had felt like heartily slapping the back of that gaunt, bespectacled man.

Listen, pal, let me tell you what happened last night. Felt like doing it especially because something like that had obviously never happened to the other man. But in the end he didn’t; the man was not his pal. Even so, the lab technician gave him a certain look. What had got into him anyway; he knew it wasn’t quite proper to entrust the technician with the examination of materials that he, the detective, could not have obtained by legitimate means.

When the first sketch of an investigation quickly comes together with almost no missing pieces, one must be especially careful. In the universe a strict logical net holds up not only great truths but also great errors, so it may often happen that one believes one is on the trail of a great truth when in fact one has only been taken in by a rather weak idea of one’s own.

He did not continue under the neatly pruned fruit trees — mainly apple and pear trees, and plum trees farther off — and he did not step out onto the grass of the clearing.

What petty things I investigate, what shitty little things I let myself brood on, and I make myself a laughingstock even with the little stuff; as if he needed bigger and bloodier cases, and much less diligence, for his well-being. He destroys everything with his ambition, as if he were doing the opposite in his life from what common sense required. Which meant that he stood on no firmer moral ground than criminals did.

From behind the shed door he heard the dull thumps of wood being chopped, the banging and the splitting.

A few moments earlier he had stopped his overheated car where on the map the paved road ended. He had hardly eaten or drunk all day, hence the feeling reminiscent of dizziness and a surprise about the twilight, which perhaps wasn’t real. Or he was driving not in today’s twilight but yesterday’s. To stuff something quickly into his belly, he had shouted to the sausage man through his lowered window. The man wasn’t surprised; for almost ten years he had been stationed at the edge of the city in his tin hut smelling of burned oil; he was accustomed to madmen locked in their cars; he made his living from them.

He had to watch it, though, so that they wouldn’t beat him up or stab him and mainly so he’d get his money.

Mustard or ketchup.

Mustard.

With one hand on the steering wheel, he had squeezed together the roll and the hot white sausage with the other and driven on, taking quick bites, aware that the mustard was dripping. Patting the seat next him, he realized that the napkin along with the paper tray must have slipped under the seat. I am empty, busying myself with other people’s shitty little affairs, I have lawful authorization to do stuff forbidden to others, but that doesn’t really get me anywhere. He was dissatisfied with himself for having nothing to fill his emptiness with, and just as dissatisfied with these recurring attacks of dissatisfaction. As if thinking that with such an awful profession as his, which makes him sticky all over even when he does his job properly, he probably wasn’t worthy of the woman, and not just her but anyone. And how should he do things properly. She’s an uncomplicated, fragrant, fragile being whom for years I didn’t even notice. He should honestly tell her, before disappointing her, that he’s not worthy of her and stop the whole thing. Bodily joy isn’t everything. But he could not reassure himself with this foolishness. Why shouldn’t it be everything. If he had a good fuck, he felt at home in the universe. Anyway, who in the world wants to separate fucking from spiritual joy or anything else. He wiped his greasy mustard-stained fingers on the seat and smeared the traces of grease and mustard at the corners of his mouth. As if he should instantly become someone because of a woman like that, or as if the lack of dignity in his life — the problematic relationship between his daily activities and his human compulsions or abilities — were becoming oppressive. He did not know exactly what was missing, but he was missing it very much. Now he’s stuffed full and, having assaulted his system, belching profusely, and certainly he’ll soon be hiccupping. If he didn’t have to sneak around, avoiding daylight, in the thick of humanity, he too might have noticed earlier that he had no one in this world, just like this wretched Döhring.

He was wary of hiccupping, he had vowed many times not to stuff himself with those lousy rolls and sausages and mainly not to top everything off with all sorts of cola.

When he had to hiccup, he had to hiccup, no matter how many well-known anti-hiccupping methods he tried.

Although Kienast was one of those cops who, endowed with great strength of mind and fortitude, did not lose their composure at the sight of even the most horrendous crimes, he was alarmed by even the slightest physical irregularity or the most banal pain of his own. Either his daily activities had dulled his natural good faith, which was why he could not engage himself with another human being, or he had chosen this profession in the first place so that he could experience the affirmation of his natural bad faith every day and thus keep from finding anyone to share his life with.

No one with whom he could be as naughty as he liked.

He went to the doctor with impossible complaints, sometimes to be reassured that the symptoms were harmless, sometimes to hear the fatal news he always expected. A toothache, pinprick, nosebleed, bee sting, blister, or splinter was enough for him to see his approaching end, which he was ready to forget the moment the inconvenience passed; after all, he was busy with nothing else but the deaths of others. Now, against his good judgment, he popped open the Coca-Cola can and drank in almost uninterrupted gulps. He quickly tried to let the carbon dioxide out of his body, opened his mouth wide, stuck out his tongue, sort of burping himself. A little later he raised his bottom, firing away cautiously, not pressing too hard lest he soil his underpants. Which temporarily made a considerable stink in the car. But he rather enjoyed this, sniffing eagerly, not to lose the familiar smell before it dispersed.

Occasionally, no matter how dissatisfied he was with himself, he protected what belonged to his body, pampered it, and found it enjoyable.

The old car, pulled over by the woods, was gasping for air, its overheated red body steaming and knocking in the reddening twilight.

The sky was blue over the low pine forest, light blue, the air mild for the season, somewhat misty, and the weather report did not call for snow during the night.

According to the map the farm was five hundred meters from here but a locked barrier blocked the trail-like dirt driveway leading to it. He had to jump high to hurdle it. He noted that the owners maintained the road but must not be using it much for vehicles. He saw no fresh wheel tracks among the old ones. He observed and carefully registered everything that might be important professionally, but in the meantime he was also daydreaming about his sweetheart, and he especially enjoyed his thoughts running on parallel tracks. Of course, it was enough for his happiness that he was walking here in the forest dressed in Christmas silence, breathing and moving his limbs, stiff from the long drive. As one coming home at last, body and soul rising to an unknown level of reality, excited yet relaxed. In his amorous daydreams, this was the definite impression he had of himself. As if he had found his own life’s unknown basic rhythm in someone else. The ground was soft in the woods, springy, sandy; he noticed no fresh footprints. As to the smells, he could choose between two kinds of pleasant sourness, and he became even happier because he was thinking of such trivial matters.

In the vaporous air he experienced differently the resin trickling down the rubescent trunks and the juniper crawling everywhere in great profusion, its berries ripened to a downy blue, sprinkling the rust-colored carpet of pine needles.

Later he waited patiently and a little insecurely at the edge of the woods. Everything that had led him to this point had something to do with smells, but smells were hardly palpable. He had a tendency to overdo little things; at least his intuition often told him something about a case that differed from what his factual knowledge and experience claimed. Döhring had to be alone; he hoped he was. The two locations from which Döhring had telephoned had been successfully identified, and before Kienast had set out he had listened to the recordings again. The call from Düsseldorf had been made in hysterical haste and the second call, made from the telephone of a solitary gas station somewhere near here, gave evidence of obvious panic. A person not in control of his conscience is unlikely to call the police right away, though Kienast realized that Döhring had meant the call for him, personally, more than for the police in general. And he did not seriously think Döhring was contemplating or preparing to commit suicide, though he was not a harmless boy, indeed was a serious threat to others.

Solitude has a tendency to magnify things that hardly have any perceptible significance for others.

Professionally there was no justification for him to set out from Berlin because of those insignificant phone calls. He could have said to himself, knowing what he already knew, that Döhring, given his mental tendencies, was not going to run away and would not even hang himself. And what if he did. Or if he chalked up another victim. That would make the case neither more valuable nor more complicated. Let him go on his insane way; let him go to hell. It’s just a shitty little case anyway. It would have been more sensible and more comfortable that way, if only because his mother was expecting him for Christmas Eve dinner. Although he had not become cynical in the midst of so much sorrow and dread, he never deceived himself or others that an individual life had any special value. He had a personal reason for not wanting to dismiss his unexpected idea. At least he wouldn’t be spending the next night with the woman: that was the most important thing. Give the suddenly turbulent emotion of love a little breathing space, retrieve from her a little bit of his freedom before any fateful turn of events and only then decide. Because he felt more strongly than anything else that it had already come to pass; at best he could give his conscience a belated blessing for what had already taken place in his senses and the higher regions of reality; he was still defending himself. His freedom was at stake, and he was not ready to part with it. I’ll fuck up Mother’s holy night, that’s true, I’m getting into irresponsible professional adventures because of a woman, that’s also true, but by the time I get to him, this unfortunate boy will have softened up and then I’ll kill two birds with one stone.

Kienast’s mother lived alone; his father had ended his miserable life by his own hand. In the family no one ever talked about the father’s depressions and manias, and since his death they never uttered those words or mentioned epilepsy or the father’s profession, which the father had given up prematurely so as to keep as far away as possible from his own father’s career — the latter being something that Kienast came near to, given the profession he had chosen. Although he did not dissect bodies, he knew as well as a well-trained dissector or renowned forensic specialist did what to find where, or what biophysical processes occur in the human system after death.

He could not have said in what area or how Döhring would soften up, but his mind was feeling its way in that direction. The morning of the day before, he had found significant clues and therefore could not forbid himself a few suppositions about the student. Even if there was something irrational in his interest and suspicion. Deep in his heart he pitied the young man more than was necessary. No investigation can be carried out without empathy, but this was too much warmheartedness; psychologically speaking, it was transference. As if he were unable to override his professional responsibility with the imperative of his love and was now asking himself, why have I come here, what am I looking for, why don’t I let him go, why am I messing up my evening and my night. One doesn’t do this kind of thing out of sheer pity, or rather, one should ask what trick of the soul does one’s pity conceal. He could not seriously imagine he had often disappointed his mother. Yet the belated rebellion gave him pleasure, that he had not even called and she might worry. This means that no matter how long a man lives he can never outgrow being a boy, which keeps him from coping independently with his life. Where is the big freedom then. Kienast was positively a good boy; he had been one even as an adolescent; the tragedy cooled off slowly in the family, though its narrative dimensions were so vast that it could never cool off completely. He got along with his older sister, something of a prankster, or at least he had managed to live up to the male role, not perfectly tailored for him, between the two women. And that was the very reason he could not forget that epilepsy in their family was hereditary on the male side.

This remained with him as a secret threat for both possibilities: that neither as boy nor as man had he behaved properly, or fulfilled his duties.

It lurked out there somewhere, it would not be wise to awaken it with intemperance. But he knew he was scaring himself in vain. The yellowed final report prepared by the racial biology service’s expert was included among the family papers, and he had gone over it in great secrecy even before his father’s death. It set his mind at ease because according to strict genetic estimations, in his family at worst only a male grandchild of his would be in danger. And one reason he feared engaging in a deeper, more serious relationship was because he did not want to have children. He considered both the world and himself unsuitable for raising children, and was unwilling to discuss even whether it was worth discussing such a possibility. Or whether there was a suitable world. It even occurred to him that he might comply with the verdict of Nazi science and have himself sterilized, which his father for inexplicable reasons had not done despite expert medical opinion.

Which meant that his children could thank this happenstance for their being born, which was not very encouraging.

And Kienast for once in his life could allow himself to break a promise to his mother.

He did not expect this complete illumination. The solitary house with all those lights on might be full of members of Döhring’s family preparing for the holidays, but there was nobody to be seen behind the windows or in the clearing. He saw no garage door, there was no ramp leading up to a garage or old-fashioned carriage shed, and he did not see any car parked outdoors.

Was he at the right place; he knew he could not be mistaken about that. When the basket was filled Döhring put the short-handled axe among the freshly cut wood, lifted the basket as high up against his side as he could.

He had to kick the shed door open with his knee.

His grandfather had taught Döhring that the devil tends to disguise himself and never sleeps deeply. And even if he sometimes dozes off, a careful peasant never leaves an unguarded axe, hatchet, knife, pitchfork, sickle, or scythe near him, because that’s the first thing the devil reaches for when he awakens from his brief slumber. Yet now he headed unwarily toward the house, carrying his basket. He didn’t even look back, the door still worked on the old spring, he heard it slam closed properly behind his back.

For the moment Kienast did nothing, let the poor boy go; within himself, though, he was jubilant to see how things were coming together, how damn lucky he was, and maybe his future wouldn’t be so miserable after all. He can’t afford to fuck it up now. He called to the student from the edge of the woods but not until the student with his basket of firewood reached the middle of the clearing and became defenseless. He greeted him with a loud friendly good evening, called him by his name, and addressed him as mister, all in compliance with police regulations. However, in his surprise, Döhring’s body was shaking from head to toe, which the detective could also see clearly.

Döhring immediately recognized the voice. He thought it best to put the basket on the ground, nice and slow.

His bodily response dissipated the specters and alien beings that had been gathering around him; they vanished, evaporated in the light evening mist, so that he could consciously attend to the presence of the other man. He couldn’t utter a word, let alone return the greeting. He stood with his head bowed, and as his gaze fell and lingered on the old axe on the cut wood — because very clearly it did linger there if only for a moment, and his defensive posture could not escape Dr. Kienast’s eyes — he thought of one thing only, that he would not cease his activities.

He would continue doing the job he had begun, as the Creator continuously placed successive tasks within his reach.

However, Isolde had urged him — and the reason she had not begged him more urgently was that she did not want him to become violent with her — not to think anymore about any kind of creator or anything like that, and just stop whatever he’d been doing.

The first thing she’d do after the holidays would be to get her lawyer involved, if Döhring had indeed done such a foolish thing and was now making a mountain out of a molehill.

She would not tell her parents what he had done, she could promise that. She did not believe they’d think of coming to the farm before New Year’s Eve, he’d be safe there. But he must promise not to take a single step without a lawyer and make no phone calls to anybody anywhere.

She really couldn’t stay with him, however strongly she felt it was necessary. She knew, sensed in her every pore that Carlino was not only lying but also possessed by madness, he was insane; what she saw and heard were the lies of that insanity. But that evening, her agent was expecting her at dinner in Paris with representatives of the Drouot auction house. Over dinner they were going to prepare a large-scale benefit auction for which they had great expectations.

These are all stupidities, those thoughts of his, he should believe her, and he can’t go on torturing himself with them. He’d taken some impossible ideas into his head that were nothing but barefaced lies, he had fallen victim to some clever deception, he should believe her.

She spoke hurriedly, heard herself hurrying, and was a little ashamed of herself.

Such things simply did not happen in their family. She had no idea where Carlino had come up with such an idea. Who had told him such a thing. Something that nobody had thought about, let alone taken seriously for at least two hundred years; why is he going around scaring her or himself with it now. If he can be taken in by such idiocies then there’s not much point in his studying philosophy or psychology.

But that’s exactly what he was trying to do, to look into the depth of things, Döhring said, defending himself.

Things have no depths or surfaces.

Isolde should know. In the fashion business, she had to learn the lessons of pragmatic philosophy well.

It’s a good thing he hadn’t joined some crazy cult, or maybe he should join the neo-Nazis.

Isolde should not exaggerate, should not mix up different things. He was interested in very concrete questions, and that’s hardly the same thing.

But it is, Isolde cried out, with the full force of her penetrating voice, and she blushed deeply in her anger.

Döhring went along with this childish quarrel, repeating that no, it’s not the same, because he wanted to see Isolde surrender, at least to him. But she could not or did not want to understand his allusions. At least for the sake of their own peace of mind, for their private use as it were, she should confess what she had done. What she had been keeping to herself for decades, which, by the way, everyone knows about.

Gerhardt Döhring killed at least four people because of the gold that had vanished.

Then he had to realize that Isolde didn’t remember anything; no matter how he tiptoed around the subject, she did not want to acknowledge and would not admit anything; and he fell silent.

If she did not understand what was at stake or if she did not want to understand, then let there be tranquillity.

Then let her quickly take herself off for Paris.

He realized that it was not by chance that it wasn’t happening. It was not by chance that Isolde was slow on the uptake and kept denying and denying. Things that fail to occur have the same value as divine portents. Isolde was the only person, the last one who to some extent tied him to his family, and this tie had to be loosened so that he could be perfectly free in his actions and able to carry out his mission. He never understood how he’d wound up among them. He despised his stepmother and had always hated his lily-livered father and ass-kissing younger sister, who allegedly resembled their mother.

It will be like a tooth extraction, it will make an awful cracking sound but then he will be free of hatred.

So he decided to promise her, yes, he wouldn’t think about it anymore, about these bygone things, about this creator or whatever, Isolde should go and not worry, leave him to himself. But he was tired of her atheism.

Sweet Carlino, there is no such thing as a creator, so how could you have anything to do with him, how could he exist, what sort of mission should you have. Before I go, I shall talk this idea out of your head, you can think of it as an accelerated university course.

She should know that he was very grateful to her for letting him come out here, now she should go and not worry.

One does not have any kind of duty in the world, nothing, nada, and there’s nothing that one must accomplish either with or without a creator. And most of one’s fellow humans are beyond help anyway. You might do this or that for them, but that would be worthwhile only if you had a penchant for senseless charity. And you don’t have a penchant for that.

Neither do you. I at least am struggling for it, suffering, why don’t you want to understand that.

As if at the very last moment he risked beseeching her, and his most enlightened aunt did not understand this last appeal either.

No doubt for young people it is very hard to swallow this bitter pill without a sugar coating.

He also knows that there is no creator, he’s not an idiot, has not gone completely out of his mind.

Then don’t drive me out of mine and don’t make fun of me, and mainly stop whining at me. I can’t stand it.

The one I’m talking about, or the thing I’m talking about, is not as the Christians or Jews imagine him, or the way you do. He is much more ancient, much simpler, rawer and more brutal. And it’s not important whether it has a persona or not. It bothers you because right away you think of it as a person and worry that it might be crawling out of some Germanic myth.

Perhaps I could follow you, but I don’t want to.

The reason she needs the whole Germanic mythology or the Christian God is only to conceal or protect herself with them for a while.

Somebody did murder Gerhardt.

No one ever found out who.

He killed at least four people.

You must be listening to too much Wagner, Carlino. Or you’ve become addicted to some cheap drug, you can tell me.

You’re on the wrong track, but crimes must be confessed, no doubt about it, there’s no other way, and I agree about that. Everyone should confess his or her own.

At least you should leave off with this. After Christmas we’ll go not only to the lawyer but also to my doctor. Whatever you’ve been taking, believe me, we can take care of it in no time.

He’d try to formulate it differently, but he didn’t like censoring his words.

As if he were standing on a promontory across which waves were slowly crashing right before his eyes, and soon there’d be no solid ground left under his feet.

Perhaps Isolde is right, that his agitated fantasy is carrying his thoughts in the wrong direction. But why should she be so frightened of him, why call for a doctor right away. This too is only a cultural or cultic collective term to label one’s recurring fantasies, or fantasies of the collective. Wagner is in it, no question, and so are the Greeks, and the Germans — as in a large bowl of soup.

You’re not answering me.

I haven’t become addicted to anything.

Then something very unusual has happened to you. I understand if you don’t want to tell me about it, but then we’ll have to find a trustworthy psychiatrist.

I’ve told you more than once that if you’re ready to undergo your obligatory analysis, I will pay for it.

What’s to be done, Döhring shouted, if there are cultural fantasies with these brutal gods or even the creator sitting in the middle of them. Yes, the Creator. Whether Isolde likes it or not, such words do exist and one can’t avoid them. He knows that everything is very fragile, concepts are also very fragile and one must be very careful, but that’s why. He won’t keep quiet anymore, he cannot stand it, and he doesn’t much care if he offends other people’s convictions with this concept. He will wreak havoc, will smash the system of concepts. He can’t help it, the job of cultural fantasies is to excite, and how can he keep his mind from becoming enlightened at last regarding certain issues that eventually urge him to action.

What are you talking about, Isolde interrupted, trying to turn her entire being into a palpable threat, what words should you avoid and how.

Maybe you can tell me how to protect myself from them or from my own thinking.

He said this because he did not dare mention becoming enlightened again. One day I will tell you what can be done against it, against becoming enlightened, because you’re a big boy now.

You haven’t got very far with it.

Until now I’ve never wanted to interfere with your most intimate private life.

But you have, you’ve done nothing but.

Come on, what do you know about it.

Or, all right, maybe not from them, but how is one to protect oneself from one’s own imagination.

Nevertheless, the detective was coming toward him, leisurely and cheerful, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

Which told him right off that no matter how risky it was, he had acted correctly when he let Isolde go, let her go to her happy little paradise and take her limitations and irresponsibility with her. He had broken the last thread that tied him to their reality. Where is it written that because of them he should censor his dictionary and even his imagination. He would do his own worrying about his vocabulary. He and the detective had to be left alone. The Creator’s hound has found not only the needed spoors in the universe but also his hangman, who will carry out the sentence.

This is as it should be, how could it be otherwise.

He did not understand the other gods but, at last, to himself, he could easily translate this more brutal god’s language into human language.

Let Isolde go to her dear rue Cassette, let her go and not worry.

Nothing more can go wrong.

At the very most they would be unable to decide whether cultural or mythological images are uniformly part of a cosmic reality, or whether they function as independent entities in a reality that is homogeneous for everyone.

Everything will be all right.

What he should say is yes, now the one I’ve been looking for has found me. And I shall carry out the sentence entrusted to me.

You called me, the detective said gently when he reached him in the patches of light cast from the house, and he showed his bright teeth in an overly nice smile.

Döhring wanted to reply just as gently and lightheartedly, he too wanted to attempt a smile, this obligatory flashing of mood, but instead he said to himself, I have to behead this man who has finally found me, and he shuddered at the happy thought of this verdict, that he has to finish him off.

He thought that wherever there was sin, there had to be virtue as well.

Not that having seen the axe, the detective wasn’t clear about the danger facing him.

While they were looking into each other’s eyes in the coldly dripping twilight, as if it couldn’t have been three days since they’d met for the first time, as if in the meantime not many things had happened to them and they needn’t think about so many other things, other dangerous persons and other dangerous occurrences.

If you take one of the handles, I’ll take the other, the detective said cheerfully and reached for the basket filled with chopped wood.

A man in love becomes very generous even with total strangers, though right away he saw how little enthusiasm the other one showed in accepting the generosity. He saw in Döhring’s very sharp features, and mainly in his compulsively small steps and tight movements, that his initial impression had been wrong. He had to correct himself. As though standing in the Tiergarten he had not acknowledged that this young man was not just an egomaniacal urban jerk; what he had was not neurosis, but schizophrenia. He saw the obduracy and the destructive desire to break free, he saw how the two clashed and did not let each other breathe. As if Döhring were urging or forcing himself to take steps to flee, or as if he were lurking around his own body. He was at once driven and treacherous.

If he wanted to learn something from him, he had to be on guard and address not the young man but the lurking stranger; he would have to overtake the fugitive in his flight.

Döhring’s eyes were wide and alarmed; he looked at the other man and showed that he did not understand what was happening or what more might happen as they walked together, carrying the basket.

He felt a kind of defenselessness that he could not resist, but neither could he forgive Kienast for it, and these contrasting feelings tugged and pulled his features in different directions.

And at that moment he accepted something he did not know, something he should not have accepted or come to know. A love-filled sentiment radiated from the other man for which he had no words, which he did not know, and which was not intended for him. He realized he was scowling, though in his own interest he should have been smiling at this miserable cop.

His grotesque silence felt oppressive once they reached the house; he felt he did not have enough air and was behaving in ways that did not serve his own interest, especially after they put down the freshly chopped wood by the fireplace. Maybe it was only because of a single bad move. Kienast hardly had time to look around, for they’d brought the wood in just in time; the fire was about to go out. And Kienast was, very politely, about to lift the short-handled axe out of the basket so that Döhring could quickly throw a few pieces on the fire, or who knows why he did it.

Döhring grabbed at it as if someone was trying to take it away from him or as if he feared being assassinated. As if Kienast were an assassin. Human blood had clung to the handle of this axe once before, and it had been carefully washed off so the axe could be used again and not given or thrown away; both handle and head had been sandpapered clean. The Döhrings did not talk about this, but everyone knew what had happened with the axe. Even though no trace of his uncle’s blood or marrow remained. And objects cannot be held responsible for their being used for irregular purposes. He managed to grab it, but this move embarrassed them both, the embarrassment of one only strengthening that of the other.

As if they were mutually familiar with every episode in the other’s life.

The mutually revealing move and mutually felt fear offended them in their shyness and dignity, affected them all the way to the groin. Surprised by the unexpected contact, they had the presence of mind to exchange furtive bashful looks, as conspirators do when they take large risks and then turn quickly away.

Which emphasized the silence all the more — the fact that until now Döhring had said nothing, had not returned the detective’s greeting, and was unlikely to be the one to break the silence of this house in the woods. Nevertheless the detective decided he wouldn’t be the first to speak, no need for hasty politeness, he’d bide his time. He had come here in response to the young man’s schizoid outburst, having understood the hidden meaning of the personal invitation, and that should suffice for now. He could not appear weak. It was warm and there was a smell of apples, and anyway it was time to look around, see who these Döhrings were, what he might expect. The walls were covered with old wainscoting, wooden stairs led to an upper floor, and every light was on, every lamp and sconce as well as the chandelier.

Döhring hastily leaned his carefully guarded axe against the side of the fireplace as if his very body, his bodily existence, had become shameful. To avoid facing the leisurely, brazenly inquisitive detective with his intrusive physical self-assurance, he squatted down before the fire. But he was unable to break their mutuality. He quickly surrounded the dying flames with thin pieces of kindling. Everything was positioned on its prescribed course; he could not deviate from it. The detective actually liked to see how practiced Döhring’s fingers were at this, though he had no movements that weren’t hurried, sharp, unrestrained, compulsive. He probably always leaned the axe against the fireplace at the same angle.

He blew on the fire so the flames would catch the new kindling, his agitated blowing obviously meant not only for the embers but also for the detective. Who then turned away, as if to absorb the young man’s quiet performance with his shoulders, as it were, and with leisurely steps creaked his way around the room, whose beamed, old ceiling seemed low. The rather friendly space seemed to be struggling under the weight of the upstairs bedrooms. He looked out every one of the small windows.

A man in love likes to flaunt his body. He became terrifically excited at the sight of the threatened young man. He would not have admitted to himself that he considered him easy prey. According to the rules of his profession he must remain indifferent.

His profession demanded from him two things that could be carried out neither simultaneously nor in parallel.

To avoid exaggeration or to keep his embarrassment at bay, he carefully observed the view that someone taking refuge here would see from each window. And the blowing on the fire behind him strengthened his impression that from the first moment of their encounter this unfortunate young man had been broadcasting distress signals in his direction. Being asked for help, having hope placed in him, was a very touching experience and not exceptional for the detective, but this young man was already beyond the point where he could be helped.

One kills not only out of need, interest, or selfish enjoyment but also out of suffering.

Suffering that might be eased but cannot be relieved.

A lonely bird was hooting outside, perhaps an owl. This too was rather odd at this tense moment, as if deriding the tension. And while he examined each small painting on the walls, one by one — undistinguished landscapes or still lifes done by untrained local painters or perhaps family members — he thought that no matter how colorful and rich the world might appear in its various transformations, ultimately it was a pile or collection of homogeneous materials, and that was why objects seen for the first time seem familiar or full of significance. The owl brings no misfortune to anyone, but the person anticipating danger notices its hooting. The young man’s back curved nicely. Under his thin sweater his spine was nicely outlined, vertebra by vertebra. He was staring at the flames licking the kindling, which he carefully nudged with the poker, and kept radiantly quiet with his back.

The miserable people we should consider exceptional are those who do not kill out of suffering or at least acknowledge in retrospect what they have done.

The room was furnished simply and sparingly. Between the two larger windows stood a chest of drawers, above it a rustic mirror which for a fraction of a moment while he passed before it distorted Kienast’s face, but he nonetheless found himself attractive because he was looking at the two last nights he had spent so joyously. He saw that it was really he. Facing the fireplace in the middle of the room stood a threadbare sofa with flower-patterned upholstery on which the young man most likely had slept the previous nights under the shabby blanket; perhaps he stayed there yesterday too. Next to the sofa was a deep easy chair, upholstered with the same flower-patterned material, from which a hitherto unnoticed cat jumped out and silently disappeared under the sofa as he approached. Kienast stood behind the abandoned chair. He resisted the murderously tense silence with all his physical self-awareness, overheated by love, and alternately looked out the little window, under which stood a single rough-hewn peasant chair, and kept an eye on the nape of the young man’s neck as he squatted before the fire.

Döhring sensed this precisely on his bare cervical vertebrae — his nakedness, his spinal marrow, and the forever-lost dignity in his groin.

Kienast made himself comfortable in the flower-patterned armchair abandoned by the cat, almost voluptuously stretching his limbs, like a person who, because he believes in the total homogeneity of the material and spiritual world, also believes he can feel at home in a strange place.

Kienast impudently reciprocated the young man’s disdain for mutuality, his defiance wrapped in apathy.

Does anyone smoke here, he asked after a few moments, when the flames were humming and hissing in the fireplace, which helped both men become used to the presence of the other.

Döhring said no but Kienast could light up anyway. He’d find an ashtray by the fireplace, and he pointed at it with the poker. He wanted the detective to be closer, let him come close to him and the fire; he loved the fire. Cigarette smoke didn’t bother him. He liked to light fires, play with fire, stare into fires. He found it hard to tear himself away from this one. Maybe his twin sister would grumble, but he liked that too, it actually made him feel good. It’s easy to get her mad and then it shows more clearly what sort of person each of them is.

He giggled a little at this, though the giggle turned into a rough and grating laugh, not a pleasant one.

He didn’t know Döhring had a twin sister, Kienast remarked, sounds like you don’t like her very much.

So what if he hates her.

They probably look alike.

Why wouldn’t they.

Unfortunately he’d left his cigarettes in the car, Kienast replied, and could Döhring help him out.

He asked for a cigarette mainly because he wanted to know what brand of cigarettes he’d find in the house. When he’d traveled seven hundred kilometers he wanted a fast return, if a small one. In the coat pocket of the dead man they’d found enough scraps of tobacco to determine the cigarette or brand of cigarettes he smoked, et cetera. During his illegal visit to the victim’s apartment in Fasanen Street the day before, Kienast had pocketed a suspiciously crumpled cigarette pack while the concierge helpfully looked the other way.

Experience told him that in such a much-crumpled pack he might find either grass or hash.

Presumably Döhring is lying in this and in other matters, but everything’s going along on its steady way. By now the lab technician has probably identified the tobacco.

Unfortunately there’s not a cigarette in the house, the unsuspecting Döhring answered. Unfortunately he can’t help. Even though he knows what this lack means to a smoker. Moreover, he added, for once he wouldn’t mind having a smoke himself. Because it’s a real shock for him that Dr. Kienast took his telephone calls seriously and really came all the way here.

He is not a heavy smoker either, Kienast remarked, very satisfied with Döhring’s response, but he’d driven seven hundred kilometers in one go and had even made a little detour into Düsseldorf.

It would be good to keep up the tone of this slow-to-start chat, and so he quickly continued, if he smoked four a day that would be too many for him.

Maybe one, unless I’m in company, Döhring responded willingly, though he did not answer like this because it was the truth.

Döhring indeed lied continuously, now to himself, now to others, which in itself caused no great problem for people. But he could not always neatly separate the two levels of his lies; he was too young for this, and his schizoid attacks further hindered him. Of course he kept no company of any sort and did not go anywhere, yet that’s how other people usually learned how to say things, and he thought he could say anything that others had said. And why would he share something about his private life, on any level, with a stranger, especially with such a miserable common man.

In that case, if I may trouble you, please let me have a nice glass of cold water, if you’d be kind enough, said the policeman after a silence and in a surprisingly quiet voice, as if he was testing him. Where are the limits to his self-contempt. He already had the impression in the Tiergarten that this young man had no one in the world, never had had and never would either, not a woman and not a man, or if he ever did he wouldn’t feel them on his skin.

Then the awful voice turned into a buzzing in his ears, perhaps his ears began to ring, which slowly roused his snoozing hypochondria.

Almost frightened, he repeated that he would not mind a nice glass of cold water.

But despite his deliberate intention he failed to surprise the young man with his request.

I can offer you some apple wine.

Apple wine, Kienast repeated hesitantly, as if this unusual suggestion, or perhaps the circumstance that this time he had found his match in deception and simulation, had somewhat startled him and made him think things over.

Maybe I should be a little apologetic, the apple wine is our own and frankly not of very high quality, he said with the same unpleasant laugh as before, but there’s not a single additive in it, I can assure you of that. Which by the way gives everyone headaches.

I have the feeling I’m dizzy from dehydration, so I’d be glad to have some apple wine or water, anything.

That’s the kind of thing people around here drink.

Since I left Berlin I’ve had nothing to drink.

He lied now to make the image he had given of his thirst sound spectacular. He wanted to draw the other man’s attention to himself, but this quickly became a fiasco.

Drink apple wine, make children, grow asparagus, and dry plums, that’s what people do in this region. The asparagus, which they also eat, they poison carefully and with due forethought.

Forgive me for burdening you with my request, said Kienast, who was not quite certain whether the young man was listening to him.

Mothers’ milk is poisoned with heavy metals. Other people’s apple wine is either stronger than ours, in which case they’ve mixed in a separate cancer-causing apple aroma, or weaker than ours, in which case it keeps its natural aroma, fortunately. These people’s obsession is that they must constantly choose between two bad things, and don’t forget these are my relatives, this is my extended family.

You’re probably expecting guests, perhaps your sister, and here I am bothering you with a weak spell.

Wholesale or retail, everyone deals in asparagus here — growing it, storing it, or selling it. My parents — which is to say our father and stepmother, because this woman is not our real mother, I’m telling you this so you understand everything — grow asparagus.

Perhaps I’m not being too forward, after all, by asking for a glass of water.

Or maybe I’ve already mentioned this.

No, you haven’t. I don’t remember your mentioning it.

I’m saying it because it doesn’t go in any other way except with effective plant-protective sprays. Don’t ever eat asparagus.

It’s very awkward if I’ve disturbed you with my visit.

Who said you’ve disturbed me in anything. I’m not doing anything, how could you have disturbed me.

I didn’t know that asparagus was so dangerous.

They’ve got this weak apple wine, they don’t really have anything else. They have money, though, but not under their pillows, they keep it under their skin. If you take just two steps over to Holland, you’ll see how much more modestly people live there. Yet we were the people who lost the last war. In the spring the trees get a little rinsing spray, nothing more.

Both of them stared wearily into the fire when they reached the end of what they had to say.

The detective had no response to Döhring’s last remark, the young man’s rigid isolation and deaf attitude having truly nonplussed him. Whether from the reflection of the flames or his sudden loquaciousness, his face seemed to be all heated up. The sight of his sick face and sick body strengthened Kienast’s aversion, touched with disgust; it gained shape. Which he himself could not accept. Their profession often exposes detectives to experiences they would prefer not to see or live through. He saw the young man in an agitated state that theoretically he should not have seen, even though it was the young man who had called him and even though he now had no way of avoiding the effect the young man’s agitation had on him. Which meant that this young man had another face, one that he himself may not have known, and if the detective wanted to extract his secrets he had to witness the bodily manifestations that went with that other face.

The voice the police had recorded on magnetic tape, with its diffuse, dark tone and deep vibrations, indicated something of the young man’s secret life.

Kienast could not tell whether, given the agitated face and dark tone of voice, the young man was attractive or insane, whether he was attracted to his insanity or whether all these impressions in fact repelled him.

Anyone poking around in the drawers of a schizophrenic’s brain is likely to feel close to the person’s whims and perverse ideas. At any rate Kienast’s peculiar feeling, which he’d been struggling with independently of the young man, was growing stronger.

Everything in the world that surrounds one and might influence one is, in reality, only a copy, and everything on earth is condemned to permanent repetition. Once, ten times, a hundred times, infinite times, even the feeling of love is but a copy of an earlier feeling. The act of love is surely more important for everyone than the object of love, more important than the other person is, though without an object of love one cannot perform the act of love. Perhaps his exertion had made him overly sensitive and he had grown so weak because of his barely two-day-old focus on love, or perhaps he had become both weaker and more sensitive because what really interested him, certainly more than what has been happening here, was the person he’d left behind. Something was definitely not right. The phenomenon of love is probably preceded by the idea of love, but that truth greatly irritates and humiliates the person in love, no matter how hard Socrates tried to convince Alcibiades of the opposite.

It would be pointless trying to understand something, get to the bottom of something, find something tangible in the other human being, or any proof of anything, or a handle on something, if everything is constantly being repeated a hundred or infinite times, and therefore happening within a person but not to him.

On some future night it might seem to him a delusion that he had actually discovered something the night before, or was discovering something now, but at the moment he was assailed by memories of nights alive with the sounds of amorous grappling and helpless pounding of flesh accompanied by shouts and squelches coming from the lubricating secretions of two different sexual organs.

In reality he had not become dizzy, of course — more precisely, his sensations did not have much to do with dizziness — but he could not have said whether they were copies or the original. There was a humming, like that of the wind in telegraph wires or an idling engine. Was his body simulating thirst because he was supposed to test the young man and possibly jolt him out of his schizoid fit.

Who had been waiting for his help, who knows why, but then pretended he hadn’t even heard the stupid request for water, or maybe he really didn’t hear it.

Which meant, again, that neither of them was an original specimen, only two copies working on each other. But a copy cannot satisfy a personal request.

The two of them had stepped into a world in which cues intended for the roles they were playing could not impede their mutual, laborious legerdemain.

Illusion, everything is only illusion.

The thought made him thirsty, or at least compelled him to get up defiantly and get a glass of water for himself in this peculiar house.

He had to pull himself out of his own illusion.

The short corridor opening from the far end of the room had three doors, which he had noted earlier. The first door was to a broom closet full of cleaning tools and miscellaneous items. He had no more time to waste. Like an electric shock it occurred to him that what he felt was neither thirst nor its illusion but the prelude to an epileptic fit, which would be his first; just when love was supposed to free him, his father’s fate was catching up with him.

That is how the final judgment arrives, ridiculously repeating itself. Then he went into a very clean toilet, and as in alarm he kept opening and closing doors, Döhring said not a word behind him.

Perhaps he would have made a move if Kienast had gone upstairs to the bedrooms. He must have been preoccupied with his own madness, because he sensed nothing of Kienast’s dread, which was ready to erupt; oddly, it was already enough to strengthen the embarrassing mutuality between them.

At least he will find out, before he has a fit, where things are in the house. The kitchen was icy cold. That meant the bathroom had to be upstairs. He was glad his brain was still under control and working professionally. He greedily drank water, which helped somewhat, and when he turned on the faucet a second time, the pump connecting the pipes to the outside well kicked in automatically, which made him wince, like a civilian. But he had a quick response to this: he slapped water on his face and drank from the palm of his hand in order to wake up from his torpor or from his illusion.

From the kitchen window he could see the old well.

Then he changed his mind: whatever has to happen, let it happen. He will not resist the madness and he will not surrender to his own fit, no way. He would have poured himself some apple wine; there were at least ten wax-sealed bottles of it on the table. But to have a little apple wine he needed a glass, a knife, and a corkscrew; he had to pull out drawers and deal with all sorts of objects. One can’t say he was calm when he returned to the living room; he at least admitted to himself that he was dead tired and extremely vexed. What with the things he’d had to do and those rotten little tools in the kitchen drawers, he was on the brink of losing patience.

He would rage and demand results.

The young man, poker in hand, was still squatting before the fire as if, as opposed to Kienast, he had found no reason to change his position.

Kienast continued shamming, however; he had to. He was the adult and the stronger of the two. Not only because of his profession but also because having grown up with two women meant he was used to the stereotypical role of the long-suffering strong male. He resettled himself in the armchair and, feigning great bodily comfort, busied himself with the wine for a while. What else could he do. He examined the wine’s color and bouquet, while watching himself to see whether he could weather his fit of anger.

I’d be willing to have an epileptic fit just so as to jolt this miserable little fairy, this little meat-beater, this sick little shit-head out of himself. But why should I. This is what his ambition dictated — his insight into human nature, his empathy, his compassion, and all his inclinations and abilities — which also happened to destroy and devastate his own life.

Less would have been more.

At least this way he understood something of himself and of the young man; he even understood that it would not be good for him to jolt Döhring out of himself or engage his attention. What interest would he have in that, save for the possible result.

To forgo that result would not be a professional self-sacrifice.

He found the young man abhorrent, but he was ready to do anything for him now, even show him some kindliness.

Noisily, he tasted the wine, found it rather awful and, clicking his tongue, went on sipping it. Under the guise of this purposeful activity, he had to reassure himself that his rotten life, his brand-new love — of which, by the way, he could have said anything but that it was animal-like — and his very ordinary, idiotic career weren’t going to end now because of an epileptic fit or because of his own dread.

It’s quite weak, he said, raising his glass in belated agreement.

Usually it doesn’t even keep until New Year’s.

What can I say, it has a pleasant bouquet, its temperature is good, what else could one wish for.

It becomes like water without any warning.

But until then it’s not bad at all.

To your health then.

You were probably saving those bottles for the holidays.

Come on, stop bugging me about the holidays.

Who else but guests would you be waiting for with so much wine.

And he became suspicious in his own eyes, for he was trying too hard and insisting on making headway with these stupid holidays and this pitiful boy. As if he had thought that with the help of this copy he could step into the original, the source of his premonition. Before their fits epileptics disappear into the trap of repetition.

And in that case, suddenly kindled love is not the exit from but the terrible entrance to monotony.

Because you have lit up the house so nicely, he said — and no matter how much he did not want to, he had to repeat some of the words — in nice holiday fashion, so festive, as if he were hearing similar echoes in his own skull: holidays, festivities.

There is no holiday, I’m not preparing for anything, Döhring exclaimed, elemental hatred against everything and everyone seething in his voice, but I tell you, since you’re so curious, I am afraid, he shouted, scared, do you understand, he shouted, that’s all, that’s why I lit up the house.

Haven’t you ever been afraid when you were alone in a house, he asked, and his voice faltered as though he was about to cry.

What did he have to be afraid of.

I’m not expecting guests, stop pestering me with this stupidity, and I’m certainly not going to wait for my kid sister.

I thought you were twins. Twins are inseparable.

I hate her anyway. I hate every kind of holiday, he fumed.

As though his hatred had no object at all, only it would have been nice to lower himself to the very bottom of the word designating hatred.

I don’t need calendar holidays for my joy, or for guests. I don’t want anybody yakking at me about holidays or whatever. I constantly think inwardly, on my own I am pretty much enough to make me happy, I can reassure you about that. And I certainly don’t need company to think. Even if I had something to celebrate I wouldn’t have a holiday for it, or I couldn’t celebrate it with others, it’s that simple.

Of course, while he was shouting he suddenly had an insight into this older and undoubtedly more experienced man. Who was sitting here with him, his big thighs spread, his feet in his big shoes, his short jacket open, and, in his large, loving self-satisfaction raising high the misting glass.

As if he were truly drinking to Döhring’s health. As if he could serve himself here to his own satisfaction. He drank to his love, to his happiness; Döhring saw perfectly well what he was drinking his toast to.

And since his sentiments could not be turned off like a faucet, his love spread out over everything, including this unhappy boy. Who was just staring at him, eyes wide.

How does one become so shameless and arrogant with one’s freely gained happiness.

There was indeed much to be astonished about in this question, and what a pleasant astonishment it was.

Kienast felt that he was blushing at having been discovered; the other one had seen through his weakness. He had never blushed before in his entire career. He must have been ashamed of the little secret that he was here because of the woman and nothing else. He was even more ashamed of his soft-heartedness, and not only did he turn away from the young man but he also looked for a place where he could put this stinking glass in case this goddamn epileptic fit decided to get him after all.

He should take off his jacket in this heat. He’d have enough trouble with this miserable man as it was, and he stood up to do this while there was still time; he put the wet glass on the edge of the mantelpiece. He slipped out of his jacket and successfully lobbed it to the sofa, not letting the other one detect the inner struggle in the movement. To which the young man responded by straightening up in front of the fireplace.

It’s a long story, he said in his deepened, manfully ingratiating voice. I won’t spare you, I’ll tell you in great detail.

I have no right to pose questions to you. I must say that right off.

I’m aware of my rights, you don’t need to instruct me, but perhaps I have the right to ask how you ended up here.

Nothing could be simpler.

Because I have the impression that we are way beyond written rights.

Frankly I have the same impression.

I don’t want to give up on getting a clear response from you.

I may not look it, but I am capable with a little bit of luck of solving far more complicated problems than this one. I’d like you to tell me a few things in greater detail than you did before. After all, from the very first moment you’ve been very helpful, that’s why I bothered to come. If you still remember words like the common good or helping, and if they still mean anything to you.

Even my parents don’t know where I am. Only one person does, with whom you can’t have talked.

You must be thinking of your dear aunt.

She is everything but dear, but she’s the one I’m thinking about.

Why couldn’t I have talked to her.

You could have, but you didn’t.

It’s very clear there’s no trick here. At the examination in situ, you were the one, Mr. Döhring, who gave us the important reference points. After that it was quite easy to uncover everything else.

Not from the things I inadvertently blabbered to you, you couldn’t, I don’t believe you. You think I’m stupider than I am.

I haven’t made any direct inquiries anywhere, Kienast replied, I haven’t gone around asking questions, I can assure you, if that’s what you’re worried about.

Well, all right, you’ve found out whom I telephoned, where I made the calls from. Which I didn’t count on in advance, I admit. I made phone calls everywhere I could in the whole world so that I could talk to you as soon as possible. I did it unthinkingly.

And Döhring was terribly ashamed that he’d managed to say something like this; it was such an ignominy that he should still need anybody, especially someone who was nothing more than an ordinary detective.

This is a closed system, Mr. Döhring. Nobody but I and my immediate supervisor can get to your data, and so I couldn’t have given you a bad name.

Which for the time being would not even be justified, he added, yet in his words fluttered the hint of a threat.

I hope you don’t expect me to be grateful for that, replied Döhring quickly, trying to sound as crass as possible.

Kienast had to allow more time again for chat, if only to gain time, more time to catch up with or overtake him and keep him from slipping into his own well-established way of thinking.

He’ll jolt him out of it.

Yesterday you called from the gas station. That’s not a public phone.

The owner’s phone on the counter. I paid for it.

You mean you’d have left a message on my answering machine that the gas-station owner could hear. No, I don’t buy that, I don’t believe it.

You should. I waited until he was dealing with a customer.

The first time you called from a public booth, if my colleagues are not mistaken.

You can check this as easily as you can check anything else.

Well now, the detective said, directing his most charming laugh at the young man, slowly but surely you’re learning the trade. But I did have to puzzle out, and on the run, that the phone booth was in the Hofgarten, opposite the house on whose third floor madam Isolde Döhring has her apartment. Believe me, these are not facts one can’t easily find out. It’s not the person of the murderer that’s hard to identify — the final result is almost always there, ready and waiting for you, someone saw the murder, or some seemingly inconsequential circumstance will give it away, et cetera, et cetera — but gathering legally admissible pieces of evidence, that’s what’s sometimes almost impossible.

I understand what you’re saying. Maybe I can’t immediately adapt to the way the authorities think, but I understand.

Although my visit is a private one, we can’t put ourselves outside the law, Kienast said, and this time Döhring remained silent. From that moment we met at the scene of the crime, we haven’t been private persons, and I must in no uncertain terms correct your ideas about this.

He wasn’t sure Döhring understood him.

I am the one you called, your trust in me is truly touching, but I am the police.

This too had no response.

True, I had a free evening, or I made myself free for this evening, that’s also a fact. But anyway, based on your calls and no matter what the nature of your worries was, my professional responsibility told me I shouldn’t leave you by yourself.

Maybe then you’ll have time for me. You don’t have to leave so quickly.

This was so unexpected, sounded so gentle and convincing, so full of pure human hope, that Kienast was alarmed.

I can’t demand more time or attention than you are willing to grant me, I wanted to warn you about this.

But you wouldn’t give any more, either.

That’s something you don’t need to ask about. My personal feelings and professional sense of responsibility are not so far apart.

You must be every inch a democrat.

No need to mock me. A thing like this doesn’t happen to you every day.

No, it doesn’t.

Then how can you miss the personal sympathy, or empathy.

I know what you mean.

There, you see.

But you should know, said Döhring, embarrassed, that I’m a strange bird, a man locked into himself, restless, thinking, and I’m not a great democrat. I’m not on confidential terms with other people, I have only limited experience — I mean in the intimacies among people.

I can assure you right now that you’re not alone in this. Everyone has to learn anew on each occasion — I mean, how to gain someone’s confidence.

But this entire human confidence thing is nothing but a bad game, sheer hypocrisy.

Mostly it is, yes.

Like stepping into a terrible tunnel of mirrors. Nobody trusts anybody. It’s best for one to stay outside. It bothers me especially that people talk too much because they are incapable of even the smallest abstraction.

That’s almost completely true.

They keep lying senselessly.

No reason to reproach them, they need to defend themselves.

I can’t speak of anything but myself, of course, and why should this interest you or anyone.

So as not to hear one’s own lies, people are afraid of that too.

Yes, something like that.

You may think it’s a sin, but no one can exist without lies, I guarantee it.

I don’t know whether several needs don’t combine to do the thinking in one person. Whether one doesn’t have several selves, all at the ready all the time, and one can neither choose one nor express all of them at once — only one in place of another, or one after the other, or one in opposition to another.

The faces of young people are most revealing; he must consider this. Their instinct to hide tends to expose them.

Maybe you should sit where you sat before, please.

Thanks for your kindness, but I’d rather get up. Before you say anything you think is essential, it is my official duty to tell you that nothing you say to me here may be considered as a confession.

I understand, the young man replied, though at that moment what he truly did not understand was what, if that’s how things stood, the Creator’s intentions might be.

He was ready to make a confession, against his own family, to save all of humankind, and perhaps the Creator might say that he would not accept the confession as valid.

He faltered, shook his head as though trying to shake this disturbing formulation out of his skull, out of his brain, much as a helpless sick animal would.

No matter how much I’d like to change the situation, he moaned at last — his voice very loud or rather very penetrating, because he knew this was an obstacle — I can’t be familiar with anyone.

You may be disturbed by anyone’s physical proximity.

I guess you can put it that way, said Döhring, as if suddenly relieved.

Our being distrustful is mutual, if that’s any reassurance.

But I feel it’s better than dissembling.

I understand.

I know you do.

I must tell you a lot of things so you can see clearly and understand the connections.

I’ll try to understand them, anyway.

Though my case can’t have much to do with the case you’re investigating.

If that is so, you are making me especially curious.

May I ask something of you.

First let’s hear your request, then I can decide whether you may ask it.

Would you tell me what I am suspected of.

That’s a rash question. If the occasion arises it would have to be asked not by you but by your lawyer. But I can give you a clear answer.

Please do.

Suspicion arises when factually and objectively we know what happened. I am free to suspect someone when the evidence allows me to raise charges against him or her. It’s not worth doing before then.

This would be the paradox of your profession.

I don’t know about that, but this way it’s practical. Otherwise one goes astray. One should not shut out other possibilities because of one possibility, and this is a basic premise not just in our profession.

But I had the impression I was under suspicion. Maybe not by the others, but you suspected me. And I must admit that really got to me. As if I were truly the culprit.

You’d probably find it flattering if it were so, but I had no reason to do that.

I know what I’m talking about, I don’t need you to flatter me with such things, I’ve been preparing for a murder for years.

I understand, I should have known.

To be precise, I’ve been getting ready for it for two years.

You probably want to share this compulsion with me so you won’t have to commit it.

There isn’t necessarily a causal relationship between the two.

How should I understand that.

It’s hard to explain, or rather, impossible. I’ve never talked about it seriously. I’ve no experience in it. And I hate people gushing about themselves.

You despise them, you’ve already said that.

I despise them, but I also hate them. I know I should be ashamed, others are ashamed of it, but I’m not. I can hate them individually, but I especially hate them collectively.

That is why I’ve come, you made me curious to know where you’ve acquired so much strength to despise people.

I see you’re at home in psychology, you’re trying to calm me down.

I studied it for two and a half years, to have some idea of it.

Or to learn a few tricks of the trade. When you say I’m strong, for example, you can count on my growing weak.

There’s hardly anyone who wouldn’t grow weak from that.

That I should be easy prey for you.

When we use tricks in our conversation, that doesn’t necessarily mean our intentions are false or treacherous.

I have to kill my father.

There was silence for a while; Kienast sensibly let it be a long pause. And Döhring didn’t even dare swallow during this time, because he wanted to carry out his mission: he wanted to tell all, but the problem was he didn’t have the proper method for doing this. His Adam’s apple moved up and down too rapidly, like that of a young adolescent.

Had Döhring not become so sharply outlined in his exertions, if insanity had not distorted his features, Kienast might have said to himself that Döhring was amiably childlike.

He was struggling with the air, or struggling for it; it can’t have been easy to combine such great trust with such great distrust and then express this.

Almost everyone has to kill his father, said Kienast by way of helping. But that’s not a personal problem but rather a ritual, which should be considered a ceremony. In earlier times the Elevation of the Host or Holy Communion must have had this significance. To take to myself a body that others have murdered and whose bones they have broken, when you think about it, that’s no less brutal and barbaric. I, for example, am in trouble compared with others because my father killed himself instead of killing me.

Döhring was silent again; his eyes shone soberly out of his insanely distorted features.

If you want me to, I’d be happy to tell you about it, Kienast continued readily. And we’ve reached a point, given the various beliefs in supernatural powers, where even girls have to kill their fathers, and I tell you, this is based on my professional experience.

He stopped for a moment, as if he had lost his breath like the young man, because he did not understand how two things that have nothing to do with each other could cross paths so powerfully.

Little girls seduce their fathers so they can kill them, with the help of their mothers, for the incest committed.

Somehow this created a profound silence between them.

From a sociological viewpoint this is a salient symptom in the new era, Dr. Kienast continued cautiously, wanting to say something rational in their mutual silence. You must have read the story of Lolita, or you will read it; the secret of her success must lie somewhere in that attitude.

That’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about our own father.

I don’t mean to take the edge off what you’re saying, don’t misunderstand me.

I’m not very interested in ethical questions, so I’m not interested in commercial novels either. Our father had no personality of his own, anyway, so in the sense that you propose, the way you think about it, I’d have no reason for wanting to get even with him. He was a nameless, clumsy petit bourgeois, a nobody who preferred to go around staying out of the way, avoiding everything and making sure not to stand out in the crowd.

Now it was Kienast’s turn to wait and see what the young man was getting at.

He’s the fellow who wouldn’t harm a fly.

Is that why you think, asked Kienast, still guided by surprised caution, that he might be in your way.

It’s not so simple as you might imagine. I’d have to squeal on or accuse family members individually, including dead ones. And you’re coming on with these miserable conceptual dichotomies. If I may, I beg you, please stop it. The others are truly frightening murderers, but not disgusting. Because one can understand them. But my father is a common opportunist. Legally speaking, this seems like a ridiculous accusation, as if I were harping on obsolete business. But it’s the matter of obsolescence, of statutory limitation, that gives me no rest. I won’t lie to you about essential matters. This thing torments me, nothing urges me on so much as that they continue to make a living out of this statute of limitations — until someone exposes them. And there, at that point, that’s where it has to be cut, you understand, so they can’t go on living off the statute of limitations. It’s not the legal process, I don’t care about the law — everything is legal or everything is illegal, that’s a matter of litigation, it’s all the same anyway — what interests me is the way later developments push aside earlier events and the sly way they play with this. I enjoy it too, the place of dread always filled by the next dread. Why should I remember anything, that’s what I want you to explain, but I bet you don’t have an answer.

Kienast did not want to reply to this question, it was simply not his business.

Or why do I still have this penchant for remembering things despite everything. This cannot be understood, and we cannot forgive one another for it.

He stopped suddenly and looked at Kienast as though he now saw or realized why he must kill his father or at least forsake his family.

But I will ask you to leave God out of the game, don’t go on mentioning him to me, because I hate Jesus Christ with all my heart.

Grave silence settled between them, silence of a quality that belonged to neither of them, and for a while neither dared break it.

I despise him, if you’d rather hear it that way, Döhring shouted desperately.

Your preferences are clear: you don’t care about the law, don’t bother with ethical questions, and hate God. However, I haven’t mentioned them, you’re wrong about that, neither Jesus Christ nor God.

Of course you have. You are a blasphemer and so am I. You mentioned their holidays, that’s enough for me. You mentioned the Elevation of the Host, the sacrifice of the body, of course you did, all those flowery words.

Again there was silence between them.

Don’t mention him again, Döhring shouted, you’re probably Catholic, that’s why you mention him so loudly, but don’t mention him to me here, because I hate him, I hate him.

Perhaps they were standing too close together; the poker protruded dangerously from Döhring’s hand. They were barely an arm’s length apart.

Until now, I thought I could follow you without difficulty.

The one they call Jesus Christ I cannot take seriously, I despise him.

Kienast’s glass was still on the mantelpiece; he wanted to reach for it.

But what does this have to do with what they’ve been talking about, and Döhring has to explain that.

It’s probably not his fault, maybe he’s not the one to blame for not redeeming anyone’s sin, Döhring continued, as simply and smoothly as if they were talking of the beneficial effect on the world’s stock markets of the fall of the Berlin wall, which was also something factual, but perhaps it’s really impossible to comprehend or understand what sort of crime it is to let others delude themselves with false hopes of redemption. Why would that be a more forgivable nastiness or crime than murder. Why shouldn’t every person be able to end this ugliness of several thousand years, or one’s own life.

You may be right, but not only am I not a Catholic, I’m not even a Protestant. I left the church, have nothing to do with it. The matter is much simpler than that. I’m thirsty, Kienast answered rather softly. I left my church, you understand, I’m hungry as a wolf, that’s how simple life is.

He was not in the mood for a theological debate, did not want to discuss religious wars, would have no counterarguments. If only because he saw how great the adolescent confusion was in the other man’s head, and he did not believe it.

Maybe you know a roadside place nearby that’s open now.

Upon hearing such an indecent proposal, Döhring was not only taken aback but momentarily struck dumb.

Man, oh man, he shouted after a brief silence, and then, flying into a passion, he laughed strangely, very strangely. Here I am, asking you about the existence of the deities and you come back with material things, your hunger and thirst.

Perhaps his laugh was not even a laugh but the beginning of a convulsive dance of his facial muscles.

But that’s what I’m talking to you about, your hunger and your thirst, which Christians can never appease or quench.

He cried out as if he were deeply wounded.

You can’t seriously imagine that anyone around here would dare spend Christmas Eve outside the family circle.

How could there be anything open tonight. No, you won’t find such a depraved place here, not in our neck of the woods. The people who live here are all decent hypocrites.

Isn’t there a different kind of place.

You don’t understand what I’m talking about.

Still, despite your theoretical resistance, I invite you to be my guest, Kienast replied relentlessly.

Just this once, I ask you to sit down and listen to me. Hear me out.

Come on, get your coat, stop groaning and moaning.

I won’t leave the fire. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to leave the fire just because of you. I didn’t chop all that wood to let the fire go out now.

I’ll relight it for you when we come back. That’s one thing I’m really good at, lighting fires in fireplaces.

Go by yourself, I’ve no objection to your coming back.

I didn’t see any food in your kitchen, have you had anything at all to eat today.

The refrigerator is full.

I didn’t ask whether the refrigerator was full but whether you’ve had anything to eat.

What do you want from me, and so what if I haven’t eaten anything.

Get your coat, we’ll go eat something and while we eat I’ll tell you what I want from you. We can also have a glass of something and talk about theology.

You will not talk to me about the object of my hatred. You may not do that.

What, are you preaching to me again, I understand you very well, but please stop these tasteless tirades.

This God of yours has been torturing me all my life.

I have nothing to do with him.

I hate him.

Stop shamming and get your coat. You think other people don’t suffer or other people have no god. I’m not suffering. You think you’re the only one who does.

I don’t think that.

You’ll live through it.

That’s true.

There, you see.

We’re not talking about suffering.

Good, let’s keep it that way, because I can’t stand your mawkish gushing.

But what can I do when my family is crawling with murderers.

We can’t decide before supper which of our families offers the more meaningful example, because my family is crawling not only with murderers but also with suicides.

That’s true.

How would you know. Stop talking like an idiot.

I know.

You see.

I know more than you can guess.

Where’s your coat.

The young man went upstairs and presently returned with the expensive Scottish windbreaker he had received from his aunt.

Wait, he said when they both had their coats on, and he grabbed the poker again.

First, he had to find the cat and chase it out of the house.

Meanwhile it had grown dark outside.

It’s a stray cat, he explained.

He reached under the sofa with the poker. Sometimes it disappears for weeks or months, but it always turns up.

He can’t stand seeing the cat slyly scurrying around, sneaking in and out. He so can’t stand the sight of it that once he managed to hit it twice in a row with the poker, on the spine, right above the rump, ready to destroy it.

He saw the spine crack.

There was snow on the ground that day, and he threw the cat out into the snow. It made no sound, as if he had done it in his sleep. The body sank into the snow.

But the next day, in daylight, he could not find it.

He didn’t tell the policeman the whole story, though he wanted to, but he could not forgive himself for it. He doesn’t feel sorry for people; he wouldn’t feel sorry for their brats either. If he killed a child, it would be like carrying out a verdict of acquittal. Whenever he found himself near a small child, he was afraid he might do it. Regarding children, he felt ready to do anything to save them from the life awaiting them. The cat, however, reappeared after a few weeks, sneaking, scurrying, alive, and he found no joy in this.

The owl must have perched somewhere in the bare orchard, emitting a single sharp sound at regular intervals. It sounded like water drops plopping on metal.

Another owl responded from a great distance.

The car was still breathing warmly when they got in it. For a while they sat mutely side by side and actually had a cigarette. They did it so they could engage in at least this small activity without lying.

Pardon me for asking again, the young man said after a while in the dark. I’m still curious to know your possible answer. In your opinion is there a god in this world or the universe, not the Christians’ but anybody’s, and I mean any kind of god.

No.

And in that case one is permitted to do anything.

Yes.

But how can a person coexist with this knowledge, he asked, and then suddenly he let the question dwindle. Is it even possible.

Exactly the way you coexist with it, not any other way. Only people who are soft in the head can believe that freedom is a good thing that one should strive for. I’d say, instead, that freedom is necessary, you can’t get around it.

You can’t be serious, or else you are cynical to the marrow of your bones. Even if it was so, how can it be acceptable to strive consciously for evil and do premeditated harm.

Nobody accepts that, even when a person has done it. This is something everyone fears.

Then maybe I wasn’t wrong after all, maybe murder is better.

They would have liked to continue this, sitting in the dark; it would have been nice. To continue thinking about how they should mutually avoid the subject of murder, if for no other reason than that it didn’t get them anywhere. At best it would confirm their feeling of complete futility. But the detective, preferring to leave the question undecided, was willing to relinquish even the beauty of asking questions or engaging in a dialogue. As Humphrey Bogart would have, he stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, turned on the ignition, and backed up, making the wheels screech as he turned his old car around and, pulverizing their intimacy with immense gusto, took off at great speed.

He would have been annoyed at, and for practical reasons could not have approved of, their surrender to the sentimental spirit of theological contemplation.

He wanted to talk about simpler things and did not want to stray from them. It was not so much hunger or thirst that urged him on; after all, he had had something to eat and drink and did not really care about the other man’s hunger or thirst, but now he simply had to find a restaurant that was open, since he had promised he’d find one. He thought a neutral location would be more appropriate for their conversation, which he had more or less planned out while driving to Döhring’s place, mapping out various possibilities, but until now he hadn’t even come close to sounding his themes in their natural tones. He had to get closer to the young man, to get even closer, to be dangerously close, and to obtain the most intimate pieces of information, and he could not afford to be taken in by the other’s playacting.

He was wise to that, though. He saw through Döhring’s role playing. He didn’t grade the young man’s insanity as more than average; however, unlike others with this kind of insanity, Döhring played not a normal person but, oddly enough, an insane one. This is how he defended his real insanity, the points of his outburst. Everything he had committed until now was a mere taste of what he might commit in the future. And it made no difference whether all this was unintentional, unpremeditated, whether he played his role not consciously, for he performed what his real schizophrenia made him perform.

His suffering could not absolve him. He might go completely berserk, this is what Kienast thought, but until that happened he could not legally be declared mentally unaccountable.

Kienast already knew what brand of cologne Döhring used, and that cologne in all probability matched the one smeared on the dead man’s belly and pubic hair. He knew that the brands of the two men’s special-quality underpants also matched, and he also knew that both these matches could be mere coincidence. He was grateful to Döhring for this information and would probably have called himself not only cynical but also perverse if he had admitted to himself that he had come here to express his gratitude. He felt the most humble gratitude toward criminals, because when he finally discovered something, when he managed to penetrate the details of details, he could not help enjoying his profession; he always drank the cup of poison to the last drop. There was a moment when his moral superiority and professional expertise met in the joy of crime. He had been to the special store where those tight underpants had been sold to both men; he had been to the bar adjacent to the store and in the infamous cellars under the bar where, with choice and expensive instruments of torture, men surrendered themselves to other men.

It was only a question of hours before he would obtain photographs of both men and then it would be possible to determine whether they had been seen together at this notorious place.

Had it not been for this case, if chance or his fate had been slightly different, if the young man had not behaved so peculiarly, then Kienast would not have met his sweetheart. This was now unimaginable, though he feared that his gratitude toward the young man might just as unexpectedly turn into profound hatred. He had dived into the pool of love too many times, for episodes that were all too brief, and he was therefore wary of sobering disappointments. Not to mention false trails. Or the painful realization that she might not be the one, again not the right one, and perhaps there was no such being. He already dreaded the moment when he’d have to move out of an apartment once again. Or start on a different trail because he had gone astray on this one. Or that somebody once again would leave the key on his table, throw it in the mailbox after having locked the door, and another one of his crazy hopes would go up in smoke.

Better not to start a relationship at all, but then it is very difficult to maintain human contact with anyone.

If it hadn’t occurred to him that the cologne he’d smelled on the corpse’s stomach and pubic hair might not be the dead man’s own; that on other parts, on the limbs and in the crooks of the body, he detected another very different cologne, and yet a third one, the banally intrusive fragrance of some aftershave on the shirt and underpants — he would not have remembered Annick van Bruck and her enormous collection piled up in her much-larger-than-average bathroom.

And that she could tell which one was which.

He had to forget this absurd idea quickly.

The moment he closed the file on the unknown corpse, he’d gone about his business.

But about ten minutes later he stopped absentmindedly in front of the decorated and illuminated window of a perfume store.

For good business reasons, the door of the establishment was left open not only to let fragrances emanate outward, but also because now and again an assistant, hair plastered down, would saunter out to arrange and rearrange the quality merchandise in the two baskets on either side of the door now being offered for sale at rock-bottom prices, and at the same time to spray a frightfully expensive fragrance into the air from an old-fashioned atomizer. For this purpose there were large bottles of Chanel and Guerlain lined up in a row. Strange as it may sound, vaporized perfume tends to intermingle with particles of steam and soot already in the air whose relatively greater weight means that the perfume rides on them, as it were, is carried into the currents of air that passersby produce.

With a made-up story that he had not bought any Christmas presents for his sister and mother, he entered the store.

He was looking for a fragrance that was familiar to him from somewhere.

It took only a glance at the shelves for him to realize he had undertaken an impossible task. The salesgirls, faces made up to the smoothness of porcelain, followed him as he moved among the other shoppers. He hesitated a long time about whether to search among the fragrances meant for women or for men. What the salesgirls were interested in was whether he was a sneak thief.

Döhring spoke after a while, to remind Kienast that soon they’d be at the border.

A salesgirl asked Kienast if he needed any help.

He was looking for a particular scent — not too surprising in a place like this.

They both had a good laugh, and she was already leading him toward the fragrances for men.

Do you have any specific idea of the scent.

Of course.

The salesgirl looked at him expectantly, but at this moment it became clear to Kienast that Annick was unavoidable; he didn’t have the words for characterizing the scent. To his surprise, when he telephoned he found Annick at home, and she eventually agreed that Kienast could pick her up and bring her into the city. He promised to take her home too. She had to help him identify a scent if such a thing was possible.

Why would it not be.

He did not reveal the circumstances in which she would have to carry out the identification, however, and then everything got complicated. He fumbled some of the official details. He had to go back to his car. To write an authorization for consulting an expert, which required a little cheating and fudging. To have it signed so he could bring Annick into the building.

Annick finally became very curious on their long ride in. He told her what she’d have to do, and she did not panic or wonder. When the corpse was pulled out of its compartment and lay there before her, she looked at it and said they had better wait until it warmed up a little. Then, looking around, she remarked that they surely did not heat the place much.

As if to say, let’s first look at this scent while it’s cold, she started to bend over each of the delicate parts of the body Kienast had named, one by one.

The flapping of the swinging doors could be heard again. Which meant that somebody had once again opened the fucking window in the hall.

Even though Kienast himself closed it several times a day.

If only he could catch the person doing it.

This was probably the moment when Kienast noticed the human being in her, the person he had not known until then. Which surprised him. He should have known her very intimately; after all, he had slept with her a few years before. If memory did not deceive him, they had both reached great heights of satisfaction. The mutual pleasure had its endearing little characteristics, as it were, which made both of them see and experience the other, and they could not have forgotten each other any more than they forgot other partners, but let’s say there was nothing more to it.

Occasionally one can very definitely feel something like this: unforgettable but nothing beyond that. And that’s enough for a pleasant memory. But not strong enough to make one go back. And the other one must feel the same way; after all, s/he’s not coming back either.

It was as if back then he had only seen something mechanical about her, and now he saw something essential, and there didn’t seem to be a direct connection between the two. He could not have told himself exactly what the nature of the mechanical pleasure may have been or, in contrast, what the nature of pleasure might be with this essential being. Or what her essential self would promise. But he saw clearly that the two were not the same.

Perhaps the essential in itself is beyond description, but seeing it enables one to describe the former experience as mechanical.

There’s no point in waiting to fall in love; one can’t resist surrendering to one’s own great mechanical pleasure, which may be the very thing that blocks falling in love.

Annick surprised him with her very fragile professional passion, though her manners were rather crude, like her voice and physique. In the brightly lit hall with its floor-to-ceiling tiles, she gave no sign of her passion. She may have swayed her head, pensively, raised her eyebrows a little, but even that she did cautiously. She must have captivated him with her professional objectivity, which in no way clashed with humility or devotion. As if he were saying to himself about the woman that he’d never seen anything so beautiful even though he could see she was not so beautiful. Just as one’s distance from and proximity to an object meet on the object, without which the object might perhaps not exist.

Conclusion, asked Kienast, impatient to know her findings.

We’d better wait a little more.

Kienast suggested they leave the corpse, go to his office, have coffee in the canteen or go anywhere, but out of here.

No, they’d better stay.

Just because they are staying Annick doesn’t have to look at the corpse, and out of politeness, he held her eyes.

Then he said that the scent had been properly applied, but it might also have been smeared on.

They could not have said what they were looking at with each other, but they remained like that for a long time.

Eventually they spoke of Annick’s exceptional vocation, which made it easier to remain in the mute and neutral realm and to keep the corpse from slipping back into their consciousness.

They did not sit down.

Two days later Kienast would not remember what they had talked about.

But they did not grow tired.

Then, just as Döhring had indicated, the barrier became visible, the small border station. Kienast stopped the car but did not turn off the engine, only lowered his high beams so as not to blind the border guard sauntering in their direction.

Kienast asked Döhring if he had his papers with him.

Döhring answered that he really hadn’t expected to cross the border.

He laughed irritatingly — literally neighed.

Well, then, tonight you’ll do that too, Kienast answered and showed his official badge.

They were on their way within minutes, but that irritating laugh hovered in the air between them for some time. A short distance from the border, near Venlo, they found an open restaurant overlooking the dark river, the Maas. At the far end of the hall, around a long table festively decorated with clusters of candlesticks, sat an all-male group, loud and jovial. The candle flames seen between their faces showed the direction of the draft.

Kienast and Döhring sat down at a table by the window where it was cooler, almost offputtingly so, but they stayed far away from the men at the big table.

The choices tonight aren’t much, said the waiter.

Tell us what you have.

Cream of asparagus soup.

They both laughed, which the waiter did not understand; he looked at them suspiciously.

No, thank you, we won’t want that.

Fish in aspic, and the waiter indicated the long table, what the friends there are eating.

What d’you say.

Made with river fish — bream, perch, tench, the waiter said, and he pointed toward the Maas.

They ordered the fish in aspic, some wine to go with it, and then looked out at the river, of which they could see only as much as the restaurant’s large window faintly illuminated, as though a motionless slightly cambered metallic mass were lying out there.

Annick returned to the corpse two more times. But even before that Kienast had asked her if it was possible to take samples.

Theoretically, yes, but for that it has to warm up more. And I’d need some blotting paper.

And if you can take a sample, can the sample be preserved.

Theoretically.

How.

We put it into a phial, seal it, wax it, and analyze it.

And would she give her expert opinion on it.

Why would she not.

An hour later they returned to the corpse for the third time. She was almost certain, and seemed to be excited about this, that it was a very expensive and rarely used scent, prepared by special request at the Paris perfumery of Eugène d’Estissac.

What’s it called.

L’Épice du Bonheur.

Standing at the feet and head of the corpse, they burst out laughing.

Perhaps they acknowledged that this might be the only spice of happiness.

It contains a few unrecognizable ingredients, which is only natural, probably some animal gland or secretion, then leather, bark, pepper, and coriander, which give the scent its male character, cedar, probably some hesperidins — lemon or orange, I think both — and hay and even some tonka beans, which dissolve and lighten the masculine elements, and then patchouli and vanilla, which give it a feminine tone.

But how can you know this so precisely.

Coffee, he added.

For me, this would be too many good things to choose from.

You can’t always tell who the murderer is, either.

Not always.

But sometimes you can.

In Full Swing

In the spring storm, the city remained deserted at night; not a soul anywhere, but this did not dishearten either of them.

They were preoccupied with themselves, with their own little past and their own little future.

On Queen Vilma Road, Kristóf excitedly showed her the restaurant garden, which had been empty and closed for years, where a long time ago Hedda Hiller used to sing at the sunny afternoon teas. Their eyes searched through the bare, nervously swaying branches of the horse chestnut trees to find the terrace from which he had watched the heavenly chanteuse and fainted in his fright.

It was as if he were giving away a guarded family secret.

As Klára leaned forward the better to see the terrace, the smooth mink coat opened on her body.

Not that way, look over here, it’s the third one from the left.

Amid the busy pointing, their faces touched, perhaps accidentally, and there was her scent, her shoulders and her breasts. The contact was so light and accidental, their bodies taut as bows, that they both burst into laughter and then laughed in each other’s face. In which act there was enough death-defying courage to make them recoil. Their future became heavy and their past threatening; they said nothing.

Later, at a slow pace, they turned on to Aréna Road so Kristóf could show her the building facing City Park that his great-grandfather had built in defiance of the prevailing notions of his era. Klára was interested, curious about everything, or at least she gave the impression that she wanted to know everything about him and all at once. In the distance, somewhere around Heroes’ Square, they saw police assault cars again, parked with their searchlights aimed at each other above the darkly glittering pavement, but the two of them ignored the cars and searchlights since they were going in the opposite direction.

The squalls were strong, yet occasionally there was a sweet, spring lightness in the air.

The pigs set up a veritable light barrier on the streets, Kristóf said, but no one in those days would have said anything about it out loud or even thought it. Bright light from the assault cars came though the rear window of the car and turned their faces eerily pale. Even if one didn’t have a guilty conscience, this light made one feel that one’s unguarded thoughts might be exposed at any moment and one would be caught doing something unawares; one cannot deny all one’s unguarded thoughts. Kristóf preferred not to look at Klára. He wanted to show her the many abandoned locales of his life, and he also wanted to initiate the ignorant country girl into the stormy events of the city’s living history and into the stories of its compulsive destructions and compulsive reconstructions. To flaunt his knowledge, his familiarity with world affairs, which of course was mainly familiarity with styles and languages. He could only barely hold forth on matters concerning which Klára was presumably very curious. To share the city’s jealously guarded topographical secrets. He chose to head in this direction, lead her this way; this would be a less dangerous route. After all, this is where in glimmering darkness his mother had met the older communist woman for the first time, in the dark crowd thronging under the swaying lamps at a block party. At that time the streetcar line was still running here, and he told her what direction the number 11 streetcar came from and where it went to, how it rang its bell for the dancers to let it pass.

And Klára cried out that she had never seen a block party and would really like to.

How well he remembered that warm night, the noisy party on the street, the phenomenal auntie in her glittering dress who danced with his mother, how both women threw back their heads as they laughed and kept on laughing and how both women later disappeared, the auntie and his mother, leaving only the name of a city behind: Paris.

The revelers wouldn’t let the streetcar pass until all the passengers got off and danced with them.

It sounded improbable this evening, too sentimental, but it was from here, from the second floor of this blackened building with its peeling plaster, that they had taken away his father, where now, behind the curtains, a lamp was shining at the far end of the room.

They stopped here for a while, in front of the building, in the middle of the deserted, glimmering roadway. If he could have had his way, he would have taken back every sentence, every word he had uttered about his mother and father. But the question remained in the air, hovering between them, the real question: why a new love if everything ends like this, if everything is so brittle and every story is destruction and devastation.

Wonder if Kristóf has someone else.

They remained gravely distrustful of each other. The thought that perhaps he was in love with someone else began to take root in Klára, as if her jealousy was greater than her desire.

It’s not possible that such a handsome boy didn’t have anyone.

That’s how it is, though.

Then you must be hopelessly in love with someone, she cried in her teasing voice, a voice she deeply disliked. I can see it with my own eyes.

With you.

If Kristóf had had enough presence of mind, which he did not, that is what he would have answered and then drawn her close, taking his chances.

Why didn’t I hug her.

However, he was repelled by her teasing, by her tone — borrowed from the chatty dramas featured in boulevard theaters. If he had wanted to gain her for himself. He looked at her in the dark, and the shining surface of the woman’s large eyes did not reject him. But he did not reply, and he did not want to lie to her; like a little boy, he drew up his shoulders. He did not risk rejection, perhaps on behalf of their future. He did want to gain her for himself, of course he did. Yet he couldn’t think about this openly and unreservedly. And what an impossible notion it was anyway, to gain someone for oneself. And he dreaded the other person’s bodily presence, anticipating what that notion might mean in their lives. Their silent individual efforts to avert or evade their current feelings clashed head-on — and then met, as was vividly registered in their faces, animated by the lights filtering in from outside. This changed their lives. So rapidly that they couldn’t follow it, and the woman somehow had to yank the steering wheel back to its normal position.

It would have been better not to raise, comprehend, or hear these delicate inner questions.

And what’s this about him being a handsome boy.

Where does all this disdain for him come from.

It would have been hard to comply with conventional custom and start talking again in the dark as if nothing had happened between them. He moaned, or rather groaned, under the weight of the presentiment that one might possibly possess another person. The future tense kept marching ahead of them, and at every moment, they realized, belatedly, what they had just said or done. This frightened them, and so they tried to create the illusion that it wasn’t even worth talking about. They had to conquer themselves on their own. As if love’s fear of death had to avoid or overcome a much larger fear.

He thought of Aréna Road as crossing the city like some magical border or no-man’s-land that he could not get across alone — if you try it you become anyone’s prey — but he also wanted to show, right away, that he was completely at home in the two different zones on either side of the border: in the thick of the city, up the rear staircase, or in the precisely apportioned quiet streets by the boringly vast desert of City Park, in the once ransacked and then reconstructed grandiose villas of deceased wholesale merchants or banished industrialists.

But why so much disdain toward him on the woman’s part.

No, his great-grandfather had not built pretentious or grandiose buildings, no, not in that style, no, he wanted to have nothing to do with that sort of architecture. He disdained ostentation; being in proportion, that was his hobbyhorse, always talking about what was and what was not in proportion, what had to be made proportionate to what, and that’s why he was shoved to the periphery of his profession even as a young man. He could say no but not yes. But he was the one who had the idea for those crazy yellow tiles at the Lukács Baths and later for the paving on Pozsonyi Road. He was so headstrong that in the end he preferred to serve others. All his life he was ashamed of not having become a great architect but only a very rich contractor, a nobody to whom money stuck because he worked to please other people’s tastes and quickly squandered everything he earned. He built his brick factory on the outskirts of the city, in Budakalász, and from there he shipped his crazy yellow bricks everywhere, even to Vienna. He had one other great patent, the coke basket, which is used to this day in big construction jobs when they want to dry something very quickly. At a high temperature, the sulfuric content of coke becomes gaseous and engages the hydrogen and oxygen of water, burning one and precipitating the other, thus extracting the water from mortar.

How could it have remained the family’s property. Why does Klára ask such stupid questions. In 1944 there was no longer such a thing as Jewish property.

Leave off with that already.

Why does she think she can provoke him like that.

Lucky for the old man that he did not live to see it.

The last Jewish transports were taken away to their doom from his brick factory.

Anyway, he ruined everything at the right time, when everything was still in its heyday.

At last they could have a laugh at something: that the great-grandfather had managed to ruin things.

There was no inheritance.

As if they were saying that nothing could be more uplifting than penury, when one is free of the dread of ownership. And one has to have a certain talent for ruining things, a sense of rhythm.

They too will become worthy of their own doom, they too will squander and ruin everything in good time.

He has nobody and never has had anybody.

And why does he lie so shamelessly.

Maybe some stupid affairs.

One right after the other, probably.

But he didn’t dare tell her that he didn’t really desire anyone. Didn’t want to. Instead, so as not to bog down in this uncomfortable subject of love and also to keep himself from thinking about the giant, whom he loved, yes, loved, or his mustached assistant, he quickly told her about standing in line at Glázner’s, but the woman had no idea where Glázner’s was or who Glázner was, and he told her he had stayed there after the bombing, how could he have left. The bread was more important. In emergencies one’s conscience narrows down its area of activity. He told her about the unknown lady who in the dust cloud and general chaos around the Duna movie house had disappeared from his life forever, about her injured face, her eccentric hats and cashmere turbans, to show that he understood the secret signals of feminine fashion in the city of his birth and if he had had his way he’d be still searching for his mother, which had become his obsession. Even in his sleep, he knows where she lives. From the Gare de l’Est he’d have to get to Châtelet, there take another métro to Saint-Mandé-Tourelle. Then go past the School for the Blind on République and it’s the first little street on the left, 3 rue du Lac. Looking at it on the map, he figures that the windows, at least on one side of the house, should face the Bois de Vincennes.

He had been daydreaming about those woods.

So he hasn’t seen his mother since then.

How could he have seen her.

They don’t even correspond.

What on earth could she write to him about. My dear son, I think about you a lot, or what. And what could he write to such a mother. Although once in a long while she and his aunt secretly write to each other, they seem to think it best not to show him their letters.

But why doesn’t he read them anyway, why not steal them, why is he such a coward, damn it.

If they don’t want him to see them, why would he.

Why is he so submissive.

He shouldn’t be so tolerant.

He made the excuse that he was merely curious.

Curious, what could you still be curious about.

Kristóf had no answer to this, though the question touched him deeply; indeed, about what could he still be curious.

Anyway, Klára did not believe him about its being curiosity; she thought it was plain cowardice.

He is a coward, doesn’t want to acknowledge his own situation, and prefers to daydream.

It was time to get rid of this great cowardice of his.

It embarrassed them both to have Klára so annoyed with him. She was ready to explode with the anger she felt about him, that is to say on his behalf.

He should rebel, why put up with it. Why doesn’t he rebel against his family. They must be a terrible bunch, at least judging by what he had been telling her. At the very least he should rebel against them, if he does nothing else. Nothing sensible, that is. And why, actually, doesn’t he do something sensible with his life, she kept crying out in a low voice, shaking the steering wheel with her gloved hands.

Kristóf asked her in vain what he could do, against whom and how and what for.

She could not calm herself down.

Let them feel the crack of his whip, why must he suffer everything without saying anything.

He chose to tell her quickly about Ilonka Weisz, about his unspeakable shame, as if mentioning his silent suffering had reminded him of it, and he told her almost everything about what they had done to him on the fourth floor when, because of his pathological curiosity, those Weisz boys had managed to entrap him. He also told her about the mutilated man on the rolling board, in whom he had recognized his hauled-away father, and whom he could not follow on the sidewalk as the man propelled himself forward among the people.

Among their feet.

He could not really tell the story; that is how great his humiliation was.

And really, why does he put up with it all.

That is why he kept babbling instead about his grandmother’s women friends and the autumn weeks spent in the Grand Hotel on Margit Island, so he wouldn’t have to tell this story either, down to its painful marrow, not to let it hurt so much.

When he had followed his father or, who knows, perhaps a total stranger through the bustling city.

And he wanted very much to ask the woman how she saw this pathological curiosity of his; she should tell him, just this once, exactly what she thought about it, honestly. But this too was only a substitute for another question that he wouldn’t have asked of himself. He would have asked it of the woman, except that her silence was so belligerent, so he decided not to risk the question about his curiosity either. Had he gone out of his mind, how else could he do such a thing, keep spying on a total stranger for weeks.

Does she see signs of insanity in him.

What should he do.

Or what does she want from him, from such a madman, and what does her obstinate and reproachful silence mean.

He was not hallucinating, why would anybody hallucinate about such a thing; his curiosity guided him to the right place because that miserable wretch was his father, in his bones he felt identical to him.

What idiocy, how could he feel someone else’s missing limbs.

Yet he did, no matter that he knew it was insanity and he shouldn’t be doing a thing like that.

He only regretted — and he could not possibly talk to the woman about this either — that because of the black dog he hadn’t had the strength to get undressed at the right moment. That he could not throw his clothes, soaked with strangers’ piss and jism, off the bridge and then jump after them into the Danube.

He felt as if he had deprived the universe of a painfully beautiful scene.

In the name of the universe too, he felt sorry for himself.

But though it hadn’t happened then, it might happen tomorrow.

One more thing I have to tell you, he said, surprising himself a little, when he wanted to jump into the Danube from the Árpád Bridge, it was perhaps the devil that held him back.

But why did he want to jump.

His rotten black dog held him back. It had broken out of the garbage bay and come after him. He literally ran him down, literally shoved him against the railing in the joy of finding him and started licking his face with his big tongue.

But what kind of black dog and what garbage bay.

As if he had not heard the woman’s questions, he kept telling her about his disgust, his shameful weakness. When animals get too close to him he begins to choke up, he doesn’t know why. The roof of his mouth begins to blister, he retches, and he has to pull himself away from the animal. He cannot share anything with them, not even with a lizard or a porcupine. So for him to do what he had planned long before, he first had to free himself of the dog. But he could not chase it away. The dog simply wouldn’t acknowledge that it was being chased away. It was happy, it wagged its tail and barked hideously. Throw it over the railing, kill it — he really couldn’t think of anything else. It would have fit between the uprights of the railing, he could have shoved it through, but the dog thought he wanted to play.

Klára listened to him for a while, morose and silent, as though disapproving, but from her face it was impossible to tell what she disapproved of, the entire story, his way of telling the story, or the subjects of his story.

She had lowered her gloved hands from the steering wheel and into her lap some time ago.

What garbage bay, what dog, she asked again. She worried, forlornly and quietly, about her own questions.

Kristóf had not yet told her the whole story, how was she to understand it.

They were standing in the middle of Aréna Road, which hadn’t been called Aréna Road for a long time, just as Queen Vilma Road did not stay Queen Vilma Road and Stefánia Boulevard was no longer Stefánia Boulevard, though decades later people in the city were still referring to them by the old names.

The cambered surfaces of the cobblestones were shining.

The dog would not let go of him, it kept barking, jumping, snapping at his hands, in the end they were rolling on the pavement. The dog was literally writhing with joy because finally they were playing together. But he had to get away from it. He had really had enough, and he didn’t want to prolong his life just because of a dog. He was not so curious that he was willing to put up with everything. He lifted the dog by its forelegs, it wasn’t easy, its large body was heavy, but he managed somehow to gather it up and raise it over the railing to hurl it down. The dog didn’t know what was happening but looked down and saw the drop. Although it sounds improbable, the dog seemed to understand that this was no game but that someone was after its life, and it jumped out of his arms. And as the dog did this it was digging its nails into his shoulder bones, ripped my shirt to pieces, he shouted, laughing; as he went on with his tale Kristóf became louder and louder. He was guffawing, not to mention my skin. As though he were reciting a saga of heroes, or as if his own death wish had been the greatest amusement of his life.

With its hind legs it succeeded in clearing itself of the railing.

Pushing me away and whimpering. It stumbled across the sidewalk, I flopped down and it ran away with its tail between its legs.

It fled back to safety on the island, whimpering the whole time.

But he did not tell her that he kept hearing the dog’s whimpers even when he could no longer see it, nor did he tell her that he stayed there on the pavement with his face pressed to the asphalt and went on screaming.

Sobbing so as not to hear the fucking whimpers.

In truth, he was summoning God; he couldn’t kill that dog, let alone himself. He didn’t notice that he was bleeding from several wounds. And he didn’t tell her that later Ilona was the one who washed his wounds and that now, if she wanted to, Klára could still see the two four-pronged scars.

But how did you wind up on the island that night in the first place, and why did you take your dog with you.

And he did not tell her how sorry he had been ever since that he had chased away the dog, and how sorry he felt for himself for having to live.

He does not understand anything.

Klára repeated her objective questions as desperately as if she had known or at least had an inkling of the whole story, and as if she preferred not to know why he had wanted to die or why he thought he must kill himself.

This astounded Kristóf.

That other people wanted to go on living and he did not.

But what’s the connection, for God’s sake, say something I can understand, the woman begged him, though actually her curiosity was not quite serious. As if she felt compelled by social convention to mock and make fun of painful facts and unpleasant truths but actually found it amusing, most revealing, to witness another person in the midst of senseless turmoil. Having heard so much confidential information, which suddenly enriched her and which she would certainly use, she should have been embarrassed.

And Kristóf noted with surprise how many things he had told her against his will. He couldn’t not lie to the woman from whom he couldn’t escape. He did not want to escape from her but expected nothing good from her. Yet he revealed his chaos to her as if he were begging to be freed from his prison.

It became clear to both which of them was the stronger. Klára could free him, but not the other way around.

And without taking a deep breath before telling another lie or giving any thought to what he was about to say, he cheerfully told her he had gone dancing with a girl at the casino and that was how he’d wound up on Margit Island the evening before the incident with the dog.

But it wasn’t his dog, he explained, only a stray dog that had joined them, and then for a while he could trot out genuine details from his rougher tale, as he had done before. She was quite pretty, the girl, he said in a loud voice to make the words sound genuine.

And he was devastated, he told Klára, when this girl left him for someone else, whom she loved, which she explained while they were dancing.

Actually, there was such a pretty girl and there was some similarity between the story about her and the one Kristóf was telling Klára, but it was not there that she had pressed her hip to his, and it was not then that she had held him in her arms and whispered into his ear, forever, forever.

So that’s how it happened.

But one doesn’t want to jump into the Danube because of a little affair gone wrong.

That’s true.

Then why.

There’s always a last straw, it was because of the last straw.

And you were so scared that you roamed the island all night long because she had left you.

Yes, that’s what happened, it was a little more than being scared, and he hoped Klára understood the connections.

Then he must still be in love with this quite-pretty girl, Klára said provokingly so she would not have to doubt Kristóf’s words.

Of course she understood this banal story. Because of that girl, he had been ready to throw the miserable dog into the Danube.

It was as though she wished to announce well in advance that she was jealous and would keep track of every one of his secret thoughts.

So now they were both left with a promise of jealousy, which in fact was her doubt about the authenticity of his story.

They were sitting in the friendly old car in which the heating system didn’t work. There was no island, no quite-pretty girl, no dog, the dog’s story was very different, and the giant was nowhere. Klára’s malice was deliberate, she made no secret of it, and why shouldn’t she protect herself. Wasn’t she justified, after what Kristóf had involuntarily revealed to her with his assorted lies and profound confusion. Now everything was very clear, layers of undisturbed and unsympathetic reality resting neatly on and behind one another, and the two of them could not extract the deceits in this: that was the naked truth. As if Klára were able instantly to avenge things she didn’t even know about.

Kristóf could not take offense, with the giant being his one and only, no doubt about it; compared with the giant, nobody could be a more significant one and only.

And how could he tell her about the giant. That was a dream, a madness, a nightmare.

How could he be hopelessly in love with anyone, how would hopelessness fit into the picture. He preferred to be quiet. He could not say to her, those poor girls before you, I’ve never been in love with any of them. Under the protection of this phrase, in love, we tested and used each other a little, that’s all. He preferred to be quiet. He did not weigh or evaluate his laughable attempts at love, did not compare them with what actually happened. He was beyond all realistic hope that he would ever live with the giant. His hopelessness resided in a region very different from the one in which Klára discovered it. Even if he could ever find him again, and he couldn’t. Sometimes his mouth became filled with the giant’s powerfully odorous cock, it made him retch, it was hard with his tongue and lips to thrust back the meaty, almost fat foreskin rising like waves from the rim of the bulb, helping it carefully with his teeth; and this would happen when he wasn’t even thinking about the giant, the cock would simply pop into his memory. How could he be hopeless once the giant and his mustached assistant had taken hold of him, mercilessly tasted on him everything that was delicate and worth touching in a person, had turned their tools on him and brutally satisfied him, helping the young man over his first shock, and then, the job well done, had quickly left him.

Factually, he was not without hope.

He understood and comprehended everything very well.

How could he have wished for anything else or more from his fate.

Of course he had not forgotten it.

But how could he or why would he tell anyone about it.

It never occurred to him to tell anyone that those two had shared with him their most obvious secret. A curse would befall him if he did. The men knew that anyway, all of them, and would have killed him at the first word if he’d started to talk. And he hadn’t even had the chance to complete his research. If I had been born a woman, maybe then I could live with him, with the giant, without arousing suspicion; with some common sense, that was all he could think of to resolve the situation. But he was already very far from common sense, and this was something he took into account once he allowed himself to live. It would be better not to think about it, about the peculiar nature of his common sense, seeing as how he obviously had not been born a woman.

They didn’t want him, the men, that was the most painful part of his story, why would a giant like that want him, why would he want such a dark little lunatic like me, what for.

And he did not understand why not, could not fathom it no matter how hard he thought about it.

The most he could make his mind accept was that living beings in this world probably cannot simultaneously both understand the demands of their lives and satisfy them.

Those two people had appeared to be cheerful beings in the depths of the city night, yet sometimes he thought about them as obstinate and merciless Salvation Army soldiers. Mischievous elves, gleefully cruel in their loving. And why would they have wanted to take him on and lug his heavy historical baggage around. On the other hand, if they did not want him, why had they accosted him, why were they so steadfast in their seduction, or why had they disposed of him as they did, what did they gain by it. How did he fit in among other human bodies and souls. His rebukes were weighty.

He understood the accord between the two but how could he find his place between them.

Or why couldn’t he, with his sheer being, oust the other one. Perhaps he couldn’t understand things even when he knew them. And maybe he too should look at his life this way, enjoy its objects and themes to the full and then move on, however modest the return.

To not bother with getting to know things and making sense of them, to cast aside the more dangerous wishes since he’d get nowhere with them anyway and they had no satisfying outcome.

How could he get to know him better when he already knows him to the marrow of his bones, as though in the pain of pleasure he recognized him by the tissue of his bones.

Yet there must be something he does not know.

Not to keep still, not for a moment, and to plan things accordingly.

As if they had said, go that way, but how could he.

If he managed to comprehend this sort of existence, perhaps he’d understand why the others stay far away from curiosity about desire, from the nature of their physical common sense, from what their indifference to one another is all about. Why does the mind always want more. They had initiated him, why isn’t that enough; they had shown him the hidden, silently indifferent nature of the world, what else or what more could he wish for. For this moment right now, yes, we’ll take your body and show burning passion for every part of it we fancy, we’ll soften you up and bend you our way so you’ll obey us in everything, but not in the next moment.

But this thinking was pointless, inasmuch as he always got to the same place, and the most he could do was start brooding anew.

It made no difference what he did or didn’t understand. In his imagination the giant lived beyond all everyday hope or sensible condition; he had a life of his own with him, and for that he considered himself lucky.

What those two men had rubbed his nose in was precisely what he understood in this life of his. He’d follow the giant anywhere without giving it a thought; he understood that. And at any time; he understood that too, if only momentarily. Of course, his imagination did not bother with hope, madness, or norms. He would never again make the big mistake of not reciprocating the giant’s surprising and generous love calls and strange kisses, whether because of the giant’s lack of restraint or his own paralyzing dread. It took him a very long time to understand the sensual meaning of those kisses. But in time his imagination repeatedly completed or continued every unfinished movement and gesture. Nor would he behave differently; in his imagination he turned loose on the giant all his mental strength and physical cheerfulness. Perhaps the giant perceived his cheerfulness on his lips, perhaps in the kiss that was not an immersion but rather a brave staying on the surface. It was not a figment of the imagination that he had been living with him in his imagination ever since that first time. It’s not that without him there was no self-gratification, without his cheerfulness. They did it for each other, not he for himself.

How could he have thought he was hopeless.

He couldn’t think something like that because of Klára.

No greater devotion or loyalty is possible in a person’s life. How many months, how many hours had passed, and he was still clinging loyally and cheerfully to him. The clinging between them was not one-sided. Their mutuality had turned their lives into pure kitsch. Without it he’d never have known about lovers’ harmony. This clearly meant, however, that other people, if they could see into him, would consider him completely mad, because in reality he lived in the giant’s imagination as the giant did in his, and they would never find each other or their place among people, only the mere illusion of that place.

And knowing this for certain made him totally happy.

He should not have made the woman’s acquaintance. He thought of himself using the giant’s head. But using his own head, he had to think that the giant probably would not want to be betrayed.

Sometimes he did not know which one of them was doing the thinking for him.

Except for him, nobody could have known about this cheerful coexistence encompassing all the senses, but the giant did — and how.

What would he accomplish with a primitive and boring rebellion against his family such as the woman had suggested.

He knew of a different rebellion, perhaps the only heroic tale that might impress the woman.

Their imagination, or their mutual loneliness in the realm of imagination, the continually gained sensual knowledge about each other and their parallel lives, than which there was no stronger bond — this he had discovered on his own. Not the law of free fall, not the Demén-style coke basket — those he did not discover — but this he did. With the giant they did not look at the water to see its currents. It was very clear that Klára belonged in the realm of ordinary people, and it was to that realm that she wanted to entice him. She weighs the offenses and figures out the retaliations, but no thanks, he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to accept her suggestion. And the giant’s mustached assistant believed they’d managed to get rid of this little prick for good, and since he needed the giant just as much, he said, let’s go, we don’t have to worry about this little jism anymore, but boy, was he mistaken, and he also couldn’t have known that the pictures mutually nurtured in their imaginations never faded, that Kristóf and the giant had made a gift to each other of the sensation of these pictures.

Ordinary people don’t consider such things.

Ilona could not help noticing the big stains on the sheet, some on the silk quilt cover too, where it must have fallen back after the semen had shot up in a double-beat rhythm as if breaking through an obstacle, soaring high and then falling down heavily. They did it every night, how could she not notice it; torn with jealousy, Ilona followed the events as she changed the bedding on Lady Erna’s instructions. Not to mention his handkerchiefs flung into the hamper, which Ilona sniffed fearfully; how could she not have sensed what was happening during the night without her. Sometimes he saw on her face that she not only had discovered their secret but was also afraid or afraid of herself for him. They did not talk about this either. Something happened between them early that morning when, after he’d failed to kill himself, he staggered back to the apartment on Teréz Boulevard, his clothes torn, his body filthy and, standing in the kitchen just as he was, bloody and unwashed, wolfed down the leftover rice chicken straight out of the pot; neither of them could mention this to anyone, ever.

To catch it at least with a handkerchief.

Even after the inevitable moment, he didn’t have the self-control to tear himself away from the giant. All he could do was follow him with the handkerchief. He was no longer in his right mind, and given the nature of the thing, this should not be understood metaphorically. And the reason he and Ilona could not talk about anything was not that their sense of decency forbade it, but because everything was right as it had happened. Which he also attributed to the giant’s strength. This made him feel so strong and powerful that he expected he’d be the one who at the right moment would block the giant’s way in his frightening and cheerful urge to run amok.

For that he would have to find him first, to go back to him from his imagination, as it were.

That is how the heroic tale might have been realized, their terrible happiness.

It did not occur to him that the giant might have another life, small children who were his spitting image, but that the giant daydreamed about him he felt on his skin, in his aching frontal lobe or in his unavoidably erect penis, in the temperature of his body and the rhythmic tempo of his breathing. Or that the giant might be making love to someone else in his stead, doing it very seriously and, along with this stranger, might be looking for him, Kristóf, in the universe. He saw how they filled him with themselves, with their parts, but he was not envious of them, he had no reason to be jealous. In his imagination the giant had to remain as free as an outlaw. This was the basic condition in the functioning of his imagination, and it would have been senseless to cancel it with jealousy. Neither his body nor his soul was tied to anyone but the giant; that was the big truth; he had become the giant’s prisoner, his slave. Impartial curiosity and imagination had set him loose from everyone else; there was no one left to whom he’d earlier been bound or belonged; put another way, impartiality would not let him get close to anyone. He observed impartially even those to whom he was close. He had to distract Klára’s attention from all this so they could more thoroughly observe each other. And while flitting among his various stories about the city and its architectural styles, explaining things loudly and pragmatically as they drove along, he felt how immoderate a man he was, what an evader, a rambler who made himself laughable with his awkward, pitiful life, and no matter how hard he tried, his story was never nice and round, and there was no way back.

Only forward, deeper into the thick of things.

When it comes to sharing one’s story with someone else, the storyteller tries to retailor the story to fit the measurements of the listener, as it were. Then many things come to mind that cannot be told or shared with anyone, which slows down the telling; and with the constant jabbering the storyteller never gets to the end of anything or never returns to the beginning. Either another story joins the storyteller’s own censored tale, or the storyteller trails some silly fairy tale behind the original story.

It’s not necessarily modesty that keeps him from the story of the other person; of course, that too.

But he wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Which makes him think he should strictly separate the stories so that they won’t ever again make contact so dangerously and unguardedly. To separate the secret story from the acceptable one; they mustn’t dribble into each other. But how could things have turned out differently from the way they did. The mere question tortured him. Or what might have happened if he’d managed to make them turn out differently. After all, when telling one’s life story to someone else one manufactures not chronicles but legends for oneself. He keeps telling the legend until he too is taken in by the credible presentation, according to which his life has a nicely rounded conclusion, a brief clever punch line, an epilogue, and a lesson to give some meaning to it even beyond death. And it occurred to him again how many things he and the giant should have done differently to arrive at a different fate, one that might have led him not only to the shuddering happiness of presentiment, intuition, and imagination, but also to the other man’s ordinary, boring, everyday life story.

No matter how he looked at things and events, this other possibility, this should-have-done-it-differently, planted itself before him, constantly, demandingly. The way things did not happen and wouldn’t have been decent if they had. To achieve another story, he most likely would have had to do things about which, without information concerning the giant or himself, he could not know. How many things they had missed. One after the other they’d mishandled every illusion. Perhaps they missed another story. But lacking the necessary information, how could he describe his misses, or how and to whom could he complain about the lost illusions. His body had revealed much more of the giant than he could factually be aware of; his palms, his thighs, everything, the scent of his hair revealed him, and for that Kristóf did not even have to know his name. Perhaps he had come to possess knowledge of his soul. But he remained unfamiliar with his ordinary weekdays and couldn’t share his own with him. And what if he could. Did fate’s plan, if fate had a plan and if there was human fate at all, include impetuosity, profligacy, and enormous omissions.

And if these latter were taken into account and his fate could not be imagined without them — because the Creator, let’s say, built them into the plans as a gaping lack — is it worth talking about misses and omissions.

Why would it be.

Is it worth trying to make up for his omissions and to pursue his pleasure to the point of exhaustion. Or, to put it the other way around, one should ask how the giant could have known him well enough to hit all the right keys on the keyboard of his guts and take possession of him just as he wished. How could there be such congruence in nature. He did not understand this. Perhaps there are no differences between men because they are nothing but stupid mirror images, which is why they immediately recognize themselves in one another. And in that case, men’s life stories are nothing but repetitions and empty experiences. Any intelligent mind can foresee everything that might happen to them. Sometimes primitive things are harder to understand than complicated ones. And how can he hope to make up for his omissions with a person whom he’ll never meet again, no matter how hard he searches day and night all over the city.

He had the same difficulty imagining this never-again as he had with infinity, or with space, or the complete emptiness at the original place of creation: the Beginning. He made several attempts but did not succeed, because he saw that the vessel of space might be infinite, and then what sort of a beginning would it have, would it have a limit, could it fit into a larger vessel; he could not imagine that there was nothing before the beginning and therefore there wasn’t a beginning either. Or it happened that suddenly the giant was there, standing before him in his corporeal reality, even though he hadn’t found him in the city. As if he knew his name, János, his name was János Tuba. And if not the man’s corporeal self, then his memory stood before him, a picture, the memory of a gesture or an odor, the giant’s thinking emerging as his own.

And as if in the darkness he were blinded by the dazzling of days, he buried his face in his hands.

In the light of day he never would dare ask anyone out loud, but now from behind his hands he did ask.

Locked inside the friendly darkness of the old car he felt secure.

It was a special pleasure that the question he addressed to Klára Vay referred to the giant.

With whom can’t one talk of such things, what one calls philosophy.

He would have to leave him, and reflect and meditate on him with the woman. Philosophy must be a painful activity, then. Had he told himself forever, he could not have borne his pain, infidelity, and betrayal of the giant without Klára’s noticing it.

She must not notice it.

So he tried to keep some of the cheerfulness he had appropriated from the giant.

And he managed to surprise Klára with it; she was unprepared for it after his serious questions; she stammered — a bit mockingly and not completely free of her earlier banter — as she took a new hard look at the young man, seeing him as for the first time, at the height of his physical and mental powers, at the border of insanity, perfectly composed.

Have you gone out of your mind, she asked angrily, but her eyes flashed with joy when she heard the splendid questions.

Why would I have gone out of my mind, moaned the young man, and for a moment he looked out from between his fingers.

Klára Vay had inherited her improbably large eyes as well as her persistent and neutral attention from her father.

And what if I’ve gone mad, so what, he added so as not to sound too childish.

How did he know from whom Klára had inherited the physical texture of her eyes. And the organic world was presumably based on these silly resemblances and relationships.

Your response depends on it, Klára replied, beaming, and now it was she who ignored Kristóf Demén’s banter and disregarded his viewpoint — and in her great excitement didn’t realize she was addressing him in the familiar.

First of all, you should be able to formulate your response, she corrected herself, speaking formally.

But I’m the one who’s asking, I’m the one asking the questions, cried Kristóf in the darkness, at least this once I am.

To show what your viewpoint is, whether you’re a determinist — in which case the world is a strict system with no room for faith or chance, that’s the question you have to answer — or maybe the opposite.

How should I know what my viewpoint is, the reason I’m asking is because I don’t know.

Do you think that vital life processes, or life’s phenomena, even your own, are absolutely and exclusively in a causal relation with one another. Or in your view is there no such relationship among them. That’s another big question.

The young man lifted his head from his hands, looked out at the pavement glistening in the rain as the moving car gradually devoured it; amazed at how many stones he had tried to move in his great spiritual quest, he preferred to remain silent.

First he must answer these questions, after that they could talk about anything.

Klára answers questions with other questions, he replied, dissatisfied; this was too trite even for a trick.

Why should she need a trick, or what sort of trick did he have in mind.

To avoid things, to go around them.

He may not be aware of this, but asking questions is a classical method used in philosophy.

Then he’d rather take back his dangerous questions.

Does he believe in predestination, answer that one quickly. What does he base his faith on. Does he believe in free will or believe that the Almighty conceived and decided everything well in advance.

With the same effort she might as well have asked whether he believes in free fall.

Exactly, because he can imagine the universe as a gaping void, with not a living godhead anywhere, a kind of desolate metaphysical wasteland, and in this void he would attribute greater significance to contingency or chance than to will, decision, necessity, and so on.

He doesn’t know; how would he know.

Doesn’t he understand that people must talk over these things among themselves, people have to show one another the way and make one another realize things, why doesn’t he want to understand this.

He often has the feeling that one acts before thinking, though it would probably make sense to do things the other way around, Kristóf continued after a brief silence. At any rate, he says things first and then thinks about them, and as a result he justifies them only later, which makes his whole life kind of laughable.

Klára did not respond for a while, but clicked her tongue admiringly.

Perhaps she was busy with the car, with the driving and the empty streets, or perhaps she liked and enjoyed the thought.

Later they could not have said when they started in again or how many times they stopped.

How would he know what the order of things should be.

Kristóf had to know this for himself, and she could not decide it for him.

They were approaching Dürer Ajtósi Row, where they’d have to turn.

He should name the reference points of his personal perspective, the so-called pivotal points.

He has no personal perspective.

But of course he does.

He’s one big knot of feelings, nothing else, he’s a nobody. That things might have pivotal points — what an idea.

Enough of this maudlin stuff. They should be talking more sensibly.

It’s Klára who’s talking to him like a strict schoolmarm.

And right now I’m being relatively gentle, I’ll have you know.

Klára should stop sounding so high and mighty too.

Sensing the possibility of falling back to pointless mockery and teasing, they both had to tamp down their aggressiveness.

It’s not about categories that he wants to talk with Klára.

Does he think that world affairs will slowly become knowable and, once they are, can be sorted out in line with his admirable views. Like pralines, candy, dragées, and bonbons. These here are the ones with fillings, those over there are without; or sorted according to the kind of filling, caramel or hazelnut cream, raisins or almonds.

You’re joking again.

It’s easy to joke, but at the store they must perform this thankless sorting job at least once a week because even when one takes great care and pays close attention things have a way of becoming mixed up, and it’s no laughing matter, not at all.

He doesn’t understand why this haughty contempt. Does Klára disdain everyone this much, or are there exceptions. Why did she become suddenly so haughty.

If he could successfully sort out each thing that suits him and separate it from all other things and be aware of boundaries, his response would sound very different than if he thought world affairs were unfathomable, their individual phenomena inseparable or having no difference or connection among them. Because that would mean there were no borders, no such thing as a person’s character; people would have no traits, will, or ethical justification for their actions, at best only arbitrariness and blame or resignation or habit, and so on.

Ridiculous.

Why ridiculous.

Somehow he too had to make a decision, unless he wanted to consider himself an exception in the universe.

In any event thinking comes first — for the sake of the official definition, first comes thinking in the descriptive mode, and only after does one begin to speak. Which is not so exceptional. One surveys the possibilities, reviews what are one’s own or other people’s favored viewpoints. It’s hardly worth mentioning.

But why would this be important or interesting.

Because you are not alone and alone you can’t get anywhere, you’d be a laughingstock if you didn’t know about these things, or if you ignored them or failed to coordinate them with others. Thinking is not a solitary activity.

This made them be quiet for a good while.

Kristóf had a chance to be annoyed once again by the woman’s latest lecture.

Yet their silence affected both of them as if it were a delicate pact regarding their future. Kristóf could not tell what was inherently uneven in this silence. He was, instead, stuck on one word: trampled. The woman had trampled him, had trod heavily on him and then withdrawn. She simply withdrew. This hurt him, but he did not think it was unfair.

They were idling in the middle of the road again, for who knows how long. As if quietly signaling that they had to wait to make their turn in the night at last.

But Klára didn’t notice that nothing was or would be in her way to keep her from turning.

Kristóf was hesitantly motioning what to do, gesturing for her to turn.

And if they had reached the point where they could freely laugh at themselves and each other, there was no reason not to go on to Stefánia Boulevard so Kristóf could show her the other house with the big garden behind the pointed iron fence where his paternal grandparents had raised him. Their easy laughter grew irresponsible, which, more clearly expressed, meant they were hopelessly in love with someone. No matter how they tried to fight it. Protecting their independence from each other. Kristóf is in love with the giant and he cannot refuse to admit this. His mode of admitting it is not yet fully transparent, though it is slowly acquiring shape. And Klára states up front that she will keep Simon because she wants to, gives no explanation for this and won’t do so later. And yet they are progressing further and further into a metaphysical thicket. Where neither of them is on familiar ground because they must deal not with objects but with the essence and emblems of unknown feelings, historical rhymes, genetic assonances, and even more unfamiliar parallels and congruities. Although the building must look different because new tenants ransacked and divided it, sold off the iron fence as scrap metal, cut down the centuries-old trees to build temporary huts, pens, and lean-tos, the two of them did not get that far on Stefánia Boulevard on this stormy night.

Kristóf continued to tell his stories, to explain things, but with waning self-confidence, hinting that it might be best to say nothing of certain matters. He displayed awkwardness with all his talk; with his pig-headed persistence he showed, perhaps to the woman, perhaps to himself, his infantile clinging to various locales. Now he saw how empty they all were. The houses, the streets, the squares. And how futile his attempt to surround the woman with all those words. She avoided him, this woman kept going on her own much more objective way.

Perhaps she wasn’t in the least bit interested in so much abstraction, or he failed to present his story interestingly enough, which deeply shamed him.

As if he had failed to carry out an obligatory service.

This other story of his had little to do with history or with his own life story.

Or with words.

They did not look at each other, barely seeing more than a dark silhouette to their left or right, with the light of streetlamps flashing and fading above the car. Neither of them looked at their watches, were no longer concerned that they might be late or should be going somewhere; their commitments had faded away. Klára continued to handle the young man’s declarations with a certain innate caution. Or remained cautious because of his rebellious tendencies. She considered his vague urban-sociological theory as intellectual decoration, theatrical scenery with which Kristóf rushed to isolate both loud catastrophe and quiet tragedy. If only to spare her. This flattered her; she was moved by his courtesy but not appeased. She and Simon had banished from their life every form of courteous or ceremonious behavior, though she systematically continued to point out to Simon what rule of accepted behavior they happened to be breaking at any given moment. But now her former life seemed to be returning through the back door, a life more in accordance with her upbringing, based on the careful exchange of courtesies and the tactful transposition of brutality into something with acceptable tones. Simon had learned a lot about this, theoretically, in a course on behavioral history at the Moscow School of International Relations, but he acquired it negatively from Klára Vay. He learned from her firm denunciations how he should have behaved in given situations, what he should have done or should do. Klára Vay was not a very sensitive person and therefore minced no words; she could not afford to be sentimental. She had only contempt for everything that was weak, timid, or indirect; she struggled with her own intellect as well, she had to be clear-sighted at all times. Eventually she would begin her university studies and she was ready to do anything for that. She had had no formal education of any kind, though she had read a great deal; she was determined to fight her way through the history of thought, alone. She knew she was throwing her weight around and wouldn’t get far with her suggestion for systematization, but she had to keep on course and she could hardly expect more than that. She now and again tested her conceptual capacity and arrogantly disregarded her fiascos. Nothing interested her but finding a direct, practical, and easily understandable explanation, a formula that accepted catastrophe and, at least for a time, resisted erosion and tragedy.

And this formula, in all its elements, had to be beyond the personal.

Nobody could foresee a change in circumstances.

To find a place for herself, a form for her rebellion. So she would not remain in eternal illegality. Not to be vulnerable. She should not be allowed to sink. She would choose betrayal, destruction, and even more total devastation, whoredom, anything but the resigned muteness in which they had been living as the living dead.

The devil take the hindmost.

And no matter how serious her struggle proved to be, no matter how obsessed she had become with it and how calculating, she found it amusing that this young man from across the boulevard busied himself, so doggedly and enthusiastically, with her person — to which she herself, in her own well-considered interest, paid only moderate attention. He was following her, observing her, becoming her dog. She liked his crew cut, his humility, his gentleness, which at the same time she was ready to belittle or ridicule, his strong forehead; she liked looking at his boyishly soft lips, as though mapping out his dormant lovemaking capabilities and pleasure-producing physical attributes. She sensed correctly that the young man had no definable intentions or at least no conventional ones; he set no preconditions.

Anyway, attractive and beautiful people tend to consider loyal courting and admiration their due.

This admiration was hers; she deserved devotion and humility.

Although it struck her as strange that the young man’s courting lacked manly self-adoration and that he was not hesitant in his humility.

And she was looking for a partner in her rebellion whom she could initiate, narcotize, and dazzle, whom she could shape to her liking with her fingers, like putty, someone who would serve her and no one else.

Perhaps she was looking for a male being who, curiously, was not selfish, who was disciplined even when unbridled, who unlike other men was not too headstrong. So she could exclude Simon to some extent. She wanted independence; she had gone too far with Simon in their mutual dependence. To shake the young man out of his silent adulation — aside from everything else she had always longed for his lips — to make him stop talking and start doing something.

Yet she had given him no signs in this direction.

She deserved this much compensation: to get her hands on such an innocent, handsome boy, nice and slow. Thanks to her traditional upbringing and irregular behavior, she had missed out on the admiration and devotion that should have been hers. She regretted, painfully and urgently, not having had someone to reject. And precisely because she loves Simon, she isn’t going to pass up this opportunity. She loves no one else and she never will.

It is true that she looked at people in love with distrust; I’m a prude, she thought. She was repelled by their toying and dallying; when she saw them she turned away, pretending not to have seen them.

I’m intolerably prudish, she admonished herself, and I can thank that bigoted mother of mine for that too; she knew it, yet she found them disgusting, these dumb lovebirds.

She willingly gave up tenderness; she preferred unruliness, wildness.

What they had was not exactly love but, rather, a covenant or testament. She and Simon said to each other straight out that theirs was a new testament, why not, this was the real new testament, not Jesus Christ’s. Anyway, how can one love a snot-nosed boy like this, I’ll wind up wiping his nose. They will mate. And secretly she was excited about finding out whether he was Jewish or half-Jewish, it was all the same to her; all they had to do was go to bed and then the big truth would out. She finally wanted for herself one of these little doomed ones; this too was part of her rebellion. She had never been to bed with a Jew, and this interested her very much, this was more than rebellion against her upbringing. As though this act promised a hitherto denied quality that she’d become familiar with so she could distinguish it from other qualities; this act was still to be performed and not to be foresworn. Is there a palpable difference. Based on the experiences available to her, she did not think it was feasible to separate personality from race, since a person had no sensory means to do so. She was excited by the image of an unprotected cock, by its being circumcised, because their terrible reputation for lasciviousness lay in this anticipation. To take revenge on her parents, who with their Christian fussing around had embittered her entire love life, deliberately and well in advance. She wanted nothing of their life and still her mouth was stuffed with it; it made her spit all the time.

She could not move for all her inhibitions, therefore she made large gestures.

Hardly anyone noticed.

She also considered changing her name so as not to carry her parents’; they shouldn’t be right about everything all the time. Yet taking Simon’s name would have offended her independence, and in truth she found it ugly, common; she wouldn’t admit it, but there remained in her a proud aristocratic dislike of Simon’s rather ordinary name. It wasn’t in the Almanach de Gotha* and therefore did not exist.

Which was in every way adequate for the man’s proletarian pride.

She could have taken her mother’s name had she not felt a certain physical revulsion against her mother for her own joyless conception. She could never touch her mother, let alone carry her name. She was even repelled by her mother’s former beauty, though she could not ignore the hereditary path it traced in her, and by the fact that it was allegedly her mother’s little-girlish physical perfection that had caused Klára’s father to fall madly in love with her. Although Klára did not know exactly what governmental position her father had held or in what areas he had performed his delicate, highly confidential activities, she forgave him, blindly, for everything. She adored and worshipped him for his circumspection, calm, and wisdom. Whenever he came home for a few days after one of his secret missions, Chief Counselor Elemér Vay had played with the little girl, giving her rides on his knees for hours or shooting glass marbles with her on the living-room floor, as if he were her grandfather.

At the bottom of Klára’s memory, images of these occasions settled into patterns for happy hours ahead.

Even though she also had rather ominous presentiments about her father.

Once she was in school, on exceptionally happy days he would speak to her in German to quiz her on her French vocabulary, and they both enjoyed this immensely. She made excuses to herself, a little ashamed, for his having been taken by Arrow Cross men to the military prison in Sopronkőhida, outside Budapest, along with the elderly papal nuncio and Count Esterházy.*

On such sensitive historical terrain, concerning the question of how these men wound up in Sopronkőhida, it was advisable for her to move cautiously, if only because of Simon. She decided not to ask, not to explore; a few inadvertent or malicious remarks were enough to persuade her not to inquire further. On her admissions applications she wrote that although she and her family had been relocated, which was why she graduated from a Franciscan high school, not only was she a confirmed atheist, but her father had anti-German views and had carried out important activities in the resistance; before she was born, pro-German factions had forced him into retirement and the Arrow Cross had failed to execute him only for lack of time. Yet anxiety about her father persisted, as well as shame about her own exaggerations and distortions, shame that she felt forced to talk like this, to lie so much. She could not deny or ignore that during the war His Excellency the regent had reactivated her father’s career and entrusted him with special missions, because everybody in the family was very proud of this.

But if something deemed incriminating were revealed about her father, Simon would leave her; this too was very clear to her. Although among some quietly accumulating counterarguments was the fact that recently Simon had come very close to being offered a job in the diplomatic service; since it was hard to imagine a screening process that would not uncover her family background, perhaps it had already been done and did not conclude with a negative result.

For his intemperate hatred, Klára loved Simon even more, though she could imagine a hatred so intemperate that it might make him break up with her. In fact she could not go past a certain point with him, despite the hatred she harbored for her own family. The chief counselor’s old sports car, in which they were now headed toward Stefánia Boulevard, had weathered the Hungarian Nazi regime — and, after its collapse, the requisitioning of goods to pay reparations to Russia — in a garage in Börzsönyliget, hidden among bales of straw. Only after 1956 did they free it from the straw, using pitchforks. For years afterward, the car seats smelled of hot Hungarian summers, of larks and hayed fields. Before starting out in it for Vienna with their two grown daughters that year, wearing army boots and awful-looking trench coats, so that the girls could finally dance with their peers at the opera ball, they had to obtain a new license plate and papers for it. Were the girls to be stuck in Budapest, neither of them would get into any Hungarian university, and without that, their future would have been very bleak. In those days there were no special problems in obtaining the right papers, and nobody raised objections. After a few years of enforced silence, the old network was functioning again. On the last Tuesday of October, the ready-to-fight core members met for the first time in Lehr’s apartment. While the hoi polloi on Köztársaság Square were busy hanging people, shooting, storming the Communist Party headquarters looking for underground torture chambers and, with their own ears, hearing freedom fighters banging inside the fortified secret-police cells, the men in the Teréz Boulevard apartment, bright in the languid sunshine, were reactivating their secret society.

It took only a few days.

By the time they had the false papers and the phony license plate, the Russians, together with the city police of Győr, had sealed off the borders again. Now, sitting in the car together, Klára and Kristóf could not have known that when Kristóf fled home from the devastated square that very Tuesday to tell the speechless and incredulous elderly gentlemen what he had seen, virtually breaking in on them in his agitation, he had chosen Klára’s father’s face to focus on. As if this oldest pair of eyes having been the most skeptical were the safest, as if it was this gentleman especially whom Kristóf had to convince that he was not exaggerating or distorting anything, that charred stumps of bodies really were lying out among the burning books and documents, that people really were being hanged in the street.

It would please Klára to take a secret small revenge on her worshipped father by getting together with a Jew and thereby also inflict a nice wound on the young man. This too belonged to her rebellion; Kristóf himself had nothing to do with the passion with which she would touch him. Then she would really succeed in touching the Jew in him. No one should remain untouched by her universal pain and universal anxiety; this would be Klára’s only satisfaction.

Simon was the one; love was meant exclusively for Simon, not for Kristóf.

To see how much she could torment Kristóf and watch his torment — that is what Klára wanted, not his love.

And she saw clearly that he could be tormented.

Which Kristóf himself did not consider wholly unjustified, since his own father, killed by his comrades, had been a die-hard Stalinist; he did not forget that for a moment. It wasn’t enough for either an excuse or an explanation.

Kristóf and Klára turned their raw self-hatred, their historical perturbation and exasperation, on each other.

Oddly, the mutuality of this somewhat satisfied them.

If Kristóf did not want to lose moral credibility in his own eyes, and why would he want to, he could not object to Klára’s taking her revenge on him for the family insults she had suffered because of her father. Klára listened to Kristóf’s lamentable story with a certain empathy derived from her feelings about her father and from a vaguely delineated historical remorse. Nevertheless, she couldn’t deny that her concern for him was overshadowed by her gloating, raw and unforgiving.

Which, because of Simon, she had to deal with cautiously. She would protest whenever Simon tried to wipe off the alleged sins of his class on her, which she found extremely unfair, and would become sharply indignant.

Where does he get off.

At the top of her voice she would yell, you’re talking to me, not to my mother, not to my father.

But this was not their biggest problem.

In the darkness rhythmically illumined by streetlights, Kristóf could not get used to the woman’s freshly applied perfume. He liked the earlier one better; it had been fuller and more subdued. Also, he was unusually cold and could barely keep from shivering, which was humiliating, not very manly. And this was not only because the soles of his shoes were so thin, but also because their closeness had grown too intimate, hugely increasing his anxiety about the abandoned giant, who, although he was physically far from Budapest, surely was aware of what was going on. He had to be feeling what Kristóf felt and didn’t want to feel toward the woman. A sense of his presence made Kristóf breathe as if he were taking small samples of air into his lungs and then expelling them when he uttered his sudden, unexpected phrases. This behavior had nothing to do with his response to the giant’s unmistakable animal smell. As though he were saying to himself, Well, I’ll be, I can’t get to the bottom of this. The giant initially had no idea what to make of this attitude. Slowly he realized it, jostling among alien sensations, and only then comprehended it.

Indeed, they could not get to the bottom of anything; Klára, Kristóf, and Simon, coming together as they had from three contradictory social environments, either misinterpreted or plain misunderstood one another’s gestures. No two of the three of them could be together, on their own, without the third. This was hard for all of them to grasp. Yet the attitudes that Klára and Kristóf had each absorbed in their strict upbringing were alike in that neither of them felt free to understand certain things that it was more pleasant to misconstrue politely. Kristóf’s bottomless sexual subversion and Klára’s anarchic rebellion actively required them to find each other — now, however way they could, heedlessly.

Klára was on guard, though. She had read every work by Bakunin available in Hungarian and in Russian; she unashamedly used a dictionary when she needed one to understand what she was reading, and understand it well, and she did not hurry. She definitely wanted to be part of the conspiracy.*

And in the darkness Kristóf kept his nose alert and trained on her, inclined as he was to a more sensual and sensory conspiracy, excitedly working his nostrils to absorb everything more and more deeply whenever he pensively fell silent while telling his life story. And what made him pensive was the woman’s insane selfishness — probably the result of having been spoiled as a child — and her aristocratic narcissism, her intellectual affectations, which she balanced and interspersed with obscenities and vulgarities. Kristóf was more at home with sexual pornography; transpositions of anarchistic political pornography were alien to him. The perfume was sweet and heavy, as multicolored as the segments of an open fan, not at all anarchic, and his abdominal wall and his testicles hurt because of the relentless tension of the last few days. Klára could not have known that he was uncircumcised, which in this or similar cases is a disadvantage for the man, how could she know. Her being so spoiled, her directness and proximity, this was all very unusual, unfamiliar, and alarming, and she seemed to be attracted to him. At the same time he had to sense the pervasive proximity of something in her from which he was excluded and in which he could never be involved.

It was not a political movement that Klára imagined, once she acquired some knowledge about the anarchists; such a thing would not have occurred to her, and in the middle of this catastrophe they had to go deeper than that. She had imagined rather that she was preparing by philosophical means for a sensuous and sensory root-canal treatment. She had to get past the personal because she wanted to escape pain, and at the same time, avoiding individual pain, she wanted to share with others the idea of personal freedom so that she would not be bound by that either.

However difficult their life together proved to be, Simon profoundly bewitched Klára with his steadfast admiration, his veneration for her naked childlike body and the prodigious cascades of her hair in which he passionately immersed himself, so that afterward, with him spitting and retching from hairs stuck in the back of his throat, they both could laugh long and loud; laughing at the slyness of the body, as it were, at how some body parts and limbs resist physical pleasure. Although she made imaginative attempts at escaping pain, it never occurred to her that she might free herself of pleasure in the same way.

And it was in this sense that Kristóf had to feel, in their close proximity, the very solid presence of the other man.

This was the constant and traditional object of his sexual subversion, which by now he should have given up for Klára’s sake: the other man.

The unknown person whom he recognizes in his partner and whom, in the very moment of recognition, he disowns. And because of Klára too, the two of them could not be alone. And the third person scarcely ever left them alone for even a moment. Klára would not let him go, just as Kristóf could not let go of the giant or the giant of Kristóf, instead playing along with his mustached assistant as the fourth or fifth participant. Because of this other human being, Kristóf could enter this sort of relationship, neither comprehensible nor transparent yet ineluctable.

Simon undressed this woman as one would a child with a high temperature who has become helpless and must be put to bed promptly.

To get close as soon as possible to her body, in form still childlike; and a few moments of being left to themselves sufficed for this. To rummage around in her skirt a bit, undo the clamps of her garter belt, plant kisses on her forced-open thighs, gobble up the maddening smell of her undergrowth.

And this had nothing to do with their nonstop arguing, cursing, and even biting and hitting each other.

It was thirst and an unappeasable impatience for each other that drove them this far.

No two people can really understand each other; at best, one can admit that one doesn’t; but the two of them decided they would mutually understand each other, and that determination in fact stood in the way of their own sensibilities and powers of comprehension.

Occasionally their fatuous alliance was as if eagles were tearing at their livers; such mythological torments were no longer unimaginable. During one obscene moment, Klára decided she couldn’t be satisfied with a free-love arrangement because she realized she could not eliminate jealousy, it would kill her; the pain of jealousy cannot be dissolved or avoided, and they would destroy each other with it. It was love itself that had to be assassinated.

Only by tormenting each other, by mental and emotional penetrations that became permanent, could they assuage their passion for getting to know each other. They continually cheated on each other, which, according to the relevant mutually accepted agreement, they were supposed to acknowledge uncomplainingly. At given moments they did this well enough, accepting it and not speaking of the pain. They swallowed their mutual reproofs.

Which they forbade each other to use in blackmail.

But there always remained a moment that, with the urge to blackmail and the swallowed pain, stretched into infinity. What the other one said or did in this infinity could never be good enough, let alone perfect, because, despite everything, they both longed for compensation or satisfaction. For solace. They followed each other around with arias of curses or icy silence, they were tormented by their own imperfections and tormented each other with their objections; yet even so they could not do each other out of their love, whether unacknowledged or denied outright.

Their love remained stronger and more sensible than their sensible vows against jealousy.

If they had managed to redeem themselves from the joy of possessing, jealousy would not have been an inevitable torment; it would have been the only sensible solution.

And there was something else beyond this that wasn’t working between them; they did not know what.

Perhaps they thought that in love this was how things had to be. And if it couldn’t be otherwise, what was the point of worrying about what the other one was up to when they weren’t together.

That became the crux of the matter, the free time; may he, or she, use it as I do.

Still, they could not stop themselves with mere reason from suspecting that the other one was with someone else, doing something that the two of them, Klára and Simon, should be doing.

Each felt that being with a third person took something away from the two of them.

Both of them knew it couldn’t go on like this.

Klára wanted to save Simon at any cost from the dangers that lay in wait for him — moral decay, madness, and alcohol. That is why she wanted to commit an unprecedented, love-driven, murderous attack on her own love for him. To fall in love with another and different kind of man, any kind, with utter irresponsibility and lack of restraint, a man whom she could not chase away or avoid, and to do this not for her own joy but to help him, Simon, conquer the world.

Not with this immature boy, though, not with him.

Because in her great love she was fully convinced that although Simon was a clumsy blunderer, cold, rigid, fickle, and stubborn — these qualities were conspicuous in him even among men — he was, of the two of them, the more valuable for humankind, though without Klára he would perish. She could not leave him, or rather, she would have to save him even at the price of her own destruction, and she found this severe and utterly selfless thought flattering.

If she could have formulated for herself her own idea of a suitable candidate, she would have come up with a fantasy simulacrum of Simon with the same traits as those of the original. Who with his hard palms paid tribute to her marvelous skin, admiring it, stroking and smoothing it with infinite patience, whose palpable admiration never ceased, who watched, spied, looked at, and followed her closely, deep in admiration of her indescribably sensitive features, examining her sternly with a sober, somber look to gauge how he might render his admiration more effective, to see what more he could do with his hands and tongue, his lips and teeth, what his pace should be, and somehow ascertain whether his admiration was satisfying and authentic in all its elements and rhythms.

Which he still could not express fully because objects and body parts always set certain conditions. But fortunately something always happened that allowed him to show his unconditional efforts and to roll with them. To do whatever could be done, even if sometimes it might create an obstacle. He wanted her to feel even better. His efforts authenticated his awkward proletarian admiration at every moment, and then he could admire her even more. They’d move on, ever higher and ever farther, with a chance movement from which could follow verbally inexpressible self-adoration. He worshipped her as if she were sacrosanct. And it must be said that he was not servile, not Simon.

His devotion to and admiration for this chosen female body radiated back to him; the moment his passion arose it transformed him, which he needed, and he could look on himself as a hero.

To disregard physicality.

Klára did not reciprocate his admiration for her body with equivalent attention or passion. It did not occur to her to ask whether her body might not be the object of Simon’s worship. Or how she might look for an object of reciprocity in a man’s body if she had not already found it; frankly, she did not think she’d find anything or had to look for anything, or should serve him in any way.

Perhaps the process of male erection interested her, or anyway that’s what she showed some interest in. The way the rising blood level makes the otherwise impalpable affect of the other person perceptible. First, it tightens and then slowly pulls back the foreskin across the increasing glans penis to bare it and expose it to the outside world, to the point of possible injury.

The emblem of universal functioning in reference to a single individual.

I shall be the almighty outside world; let my inner world be his outside world.

And so on.

Perhaps the man’s pathological bashfulness and penchant for concealment hindered her in the free admiration of the erection process. Or perhaps her profound distrust of pathos, her own inexplicable disgust at the sight of any organic function, any throbbing or pulsing anywhere in the circulatory system. They also sensed that they most misunderstood each other in this area, genteel prudery not understanding proletarian prudery; this they understood well. Moreover, Simon’s glans penis was not alabaster, not pale red and not deep purple but flaming red, which is not rare among black-haired, white-skinned men.

It bloomed garishly above his body like a scarlet flower.

They would have liked to stay away from the terrain of their constant misunderstandings, but given their constant compulsion to have contact, they could not help getting things wrong all the time.

They anticipated fear, yet they flooded each other with pure goodness and willingness to conform — to the point where they did not know what they were afraid of, what frightened them so much; perhaps their fear was groundless.

As if an evil angel were forcing them to name what was bad in the other and pay no attention to what was good.

When emotional words slipped out inadvertently, Simon quickly retracted them — no, beat them back, superstitiously trying to protect their shared perfection. He was protecting her not from pathos but from rotten petit-bourgeois expressions, which he could not tolerate. He would have been happy to bite them in half, along with his tongue, filter them out or swallow them; he did not cosset her with words, he left that to his tongue and his hands, and that way he could adore himself even more immoderately for being so infinitely firm and manly.

Klára very much needed this strong cosseting, though at heart she did not appreciate that it referred to her body. But there was no word to express what made her happy, it also being the source of her unhappiness. Or the other way around. Why would her happiness, of all things, stop her from relinquishing her unhappiness. There were no common, useful expressions for this feeling, and the most frequently used ones disgusted her. Why call her sweet; she was not sweet, or darling. She was not an angel; she was everything but an angel, even as a little girl she had never wanted to be an enchanting fairy. She was nobody’s little squirrel or ladybug, and most definitely nobody’s better half.

It is possible that the man’s gaunt, lean, powerful, and almost pathologically bony body did not impress her. Or men’s ungainly bodies in general. She would cautiously check which sensation belonged to which particular body part. As if she were indifferent only to those parts of the body that aroused her and made her feel passion. But she did not consciously recognize this; it was as if she diverted her attention, as it were, from certain parts of the body. The man’s sharp critical intellect, his microscopically focused attention which enabled him to retain the smallest details, that was all right, as were his rough manners, swearing, vulnerability, and brutality, which one could not take very seriously, all of his cheap proletarian mentality, his prudery, garrulousness, and even occasional physical violence, which she endured with a certain spiritual enjoyment as part of her rebellion; but no less than these, his openness, bluntness, analytic power, and tactical sense deeply excited her. She had no objection to his indecent jockeying for position, his intrigues, his elbowing aside of competition; not only did these traits fail to blur the overall picture, but she positively liked the man’s fighting spirit. Even his fist excited her. Love was stronger than physical pain; it was also capable of evoking humiliation or, put another way, it showed her what life without humiliation might be like. They broke up several times because of his seriously beating her; she would not live with a man who beat her, but she could not manage without him. She was lost. The objects of the world stared senselessly at her.

She could go to bed with other men only when she had the chance, beforehand and afterward, to make love to Simon; and she had to know in advance that there was a before and there would be an afterward.

She increased and later released with him the tension of her experiences with others, because she was in love with him and not with the others.

As if ephemeral physical pain were the price of constancy.

But she did not take the mental humiliation concealed in their physical fights lying down, and she avenged it many times over. At such times the man justified himself by claiming she had provoked him simply so that she could avenge herself. He banished his sober or drunken rages by pummeling her. And she did love his fists, oh, how she loved them, she kept biting them; she especially loved his hands, adored the strong pads on the palms of his hands. She was not the only one Simon beat up; he roughed up others even worse, men, and it was good for Klára to know all the little details of these beatings. Where he’d let them have it, what the fuck he’d knocked them against, how noisily they rammed into a wall or door. She preferred this open free life with him; she definitely did not want the kind of life her wretched mother or the tamed females in her circle had had, complete with fastidious good manners and compulsive mimicry.

She had no desire to repeat that kind of life, ever.

If Simon hit her, she hit him back; without complaining, she went at him. If Simon, partly justified, laughed at this, she laughed also or cried in her anger and threw every object she could lay her hands on at him, or she broke the objects.

She had to take her life into her own hands, and, his eyes widening, the man enjoyed seeing how brave she was.

They could not have managed without the detailed physical pampering that covered every inch of her body.

Physical fights did not seem to be enough, though; they seemed, indeed, to increase their secretive silences.

Sometimes she would hit back with the first object that came to hand, without thinking where the blow would land, crash it into his face, tearing his skin. They might well have feared eventual police involvement, because with this sort of fighting they were bound to need medical help.

Simon had more reason to fear Klára than the other way around.

But regardless of who secretly initiated these fights, their unruliness became so childish that they didn’t have to fear each other or anything.

Simon could not count on Klára’s relieving his brutality with bouts of tenderness. He knew his way around her better than she did hers around him, and this particularly annoyed her. The man was always surprising her. Whereas Klára remained almost completely predictable for him. He did not let any manifestation of her life go by without commentary; that was his gratification.

He wanted to be there even when she was on the toilet.

You take me for a little girl, a baby.

They would fight at the door of the toilet because he kept going after her to let him in so they could have a conversation. But she thought this was an impossibility, even if a rather nice one. She wanted a few minutes of quiet in the fucking apartment.

Couldn’t we do it some other time. You want to have a conversation while I’m peeing.

She wanted a little rest from him.

Then Simon would plant himself by the door because, naturally, it wasn’t a conversation he wanted. He wanted to hear her little moans, wanted her little smells, her squeezes and tiny farts as the gas began to work or thrust the feces out of her.

Are you making poo, my dove, he asked from outside.

I’m taking a shit, you animal.

In the meantime she carefully pressed down the door handle because she also wanted to surprise the man with something, and in her excitement she let out a fart, just a short, sharp little fart, like a nun’s, but she kicked the toilet door at him, it banged into his stupid head.

That must have hurt him, but they laughed as they fought on, Simon yelling that that marquise was really doing it now, until Klára peed in her underpants, which she had just pulled back up into place.

Now I peed in my pants because of you, you hairy animal.

But Simon especially adored her for this; now finally the marquise had peed in her pants.

To say nothing of his cultic adulation, offered up individually, of her lips, teeth, and nipples, and the ecstatic admiration for the nacreous-pink crimps of her vagina. Of course he wanted to see how and where urine and feces issued from her. And once he had experienced something, he instantly fitted it into one of his idiotic global theories. Simon thought constantly and passionately about everything. They thought aloud to each other; every day brought at least one epochal discovery, each one increasing their hope that no unexplored area or secret thought would remain in either of them. Simon wanted to know everything about her, to be reassured of everything he already knew, yet he remained gravely bashful with his own body and bodily functions.

He would not show himself naked to anyone.

If he could, he would have hidden from Klára his body’s manifestations and their possible irregularities. And with good reason too, since he suffered from sluggish bowel movements and digestive disorders, but he would never mention these. He would have rather died of an intestinal obstruction than break wind in his wife’s presence. Deadly earnest, in full awareness of his responsibility, he would hold back as though their family happiness depended on it. Occasionally, he had to use his fingers to pry out the hard cork of his stool.

The harder he pushed, hissing with pain, the more the stool remained stuck.

During lovemaking, his shirt had to be torn off him because he resisted, protecting himself, and even with his shirt off he still kept on his everlasting undershirt, which he would never take off, night or day, for anything in the world. When his slightly lopsided but not unattractive chest was uncovered, he felt especially defenseless. He only let go of his shirt shortly before the last act when his mounting pleasure left him hopelessly unguarded.

And even then he would not part with his miserable underpants or idiotic undershirt.

Klára had no more days of grace for her big rebellion.

It slightly bothered her that Kristóf was deciding for her. Did not even hear what he asked or said; he made her nervous, definitely agitated. She was annoyed at being considered a silly country girl. She had a good mind to protest or to explain herself patiently.

Simon’s constant admiration increased her hunger and impatience. She should have left him a long time ago or together they should have immediately killed someone.

They had no other option, really.

Only a few days ago, she had had to throw Simon off her because he’d hurt her tongue; the dumb animal had bit it.

And not for the first time and not nearly by accident. In an instant, flavorful blood filled the hollow of her mouth, perhaps his too.

As she yelled, what the hell was he thinking of, and as Simon yelled back at the top of his voice, what the hell did you do to me again, you slut, she saw that their screaming had spattered blood all over his face and chest.

She could not believe her eyes.

She wouldn’t ever talk about such a thing to anyone but a mature, real man like Simon. But then why did he have to be such a rotten character.

True, although her childhood had been spent in senseless, forced wanderings, it hadn’t been as miserable as the childhood of this young man to whom she was now listening with a certain distaste. And she had become a country girl, the boy was right about that, even though she was born in Buda.

She and her family were lucky that as undesirable elements of society they had only been relocated, and even as relocated persons hadn’t been too badly off.

Yes, she is undoubtedly less familiar with Pest.

But he will never call her a slut again.

What d’you mean I’ll never call you a slut again.

You just won’t.

You shoved me off you, you slut, you rub my nose in the dirt, so why shouldn’t I call you a stinking high-class slut.

Your prole mother is a slut, you hear, you hairy bastard.

Great, now you’re calling my mother a slut. You’ve got the brains for that but you don’t even know when you’re humiliating someone.

I’m humiliating you, is that what you’re saying.

You’re a goddamn fucked-up slut.

You can’t even be humiliated.

You don’t even notice when you do. That’s the most humiliating thing about you people.

Don’t you-people me. I’m on my own, I’m telling you, I am not with my mother.

You people humiliate me several times a day.

How exactly do we do that, by not liking that you bit my tongue off.

Why should stinking sluts from Buda like you and your stinking egomaniac slut of a mother notice little things like humiliating people. You don’t even notice, period.

The man was simultaneously crying and screaming as he sat on the floor in front of the bed.

Your mother will also tell me, won’t she, where I should put my napkin ring, he screamed, pounding on the floor.

She would speak up about this much later — she thought about this in the dark car — but now she waded into her own life story at an entirely different place. And the man’s weeping never moved her, not for a second. If anything did, it was his entreaties, when he wanted her to forgive him and not move out. How could she not find him ridiculous when he lay there on the floor spattered with blood, screaming and crying, his undershirt pulled up to his armpits and his cock protruding from his ugly underpants, and whining about his napkin ring.

Why wouldn’t she laugh at him.

Two years ago you didn’t even know what a napkin ring was.

With which she humiliated him the more.

And now they were sitting here at the corner of Thököly Road, the faltering windshield wiper moving from side to side in front of them; she had forgotten to turn it off.

How in the name of fucking hell could you forget it, how can you be such a birdbrain.

And while talking to the young man, she remembered this about Simon, about how he had said these words; she watched the hollow clatter yet she would not turn off the wipers. Her lover would have had a fit of anger if he’d been sitting next to her. Why must a woman always forget everything, these birdbrained women. Every woman is a birdbrain. She felt a special gratification whenever Simon besmirched women in general by calling them sluts and idiots. With his weeping he tried to cover things up, but with his swearing and entreaties he exposed himself to her. That was the dumb prole’s speed; he couldn’t resist exposing his raw feelings.

It was so obvious he hadn’t been brought up properly; she tried to make him realize that, to keep emotions at the right temperature.

How could she not laugh at him, his ribs were sticking out and he looked stark naked with his continuous screaming, whether he was crying or raving.

If you fuck it up, who in hell will fix this fucking piece of junk for me.

No one.

It didn’t occur to them to get out of the car. They were doing all right just as they were. A lit-up streetcar clunked across the intersection. It was as though they had forgotten where they had planned to go or why Klára had stopped to change her clothes and borrow the mink coat from Andria Lüttwitz.

The wind was howling, cold rain was splashing, and in front of them the brightly lit yellow streetcar carried a few shivering passengers and a dozing conductor across the cold darkness.

She did not beat around the bush, cut right to the chase, to what hurt most, his greatest dread.

Now, at last, finally, she was pregnant.

The word hit Kristóf like a bludgeon.

Not that a single breath of Simon’s hadn’t been enough to make her pregnant, but now she was pregnant again.

Although with his other self Kristóf remained anxious for a while longer, he kept listening to the woman while mulling over his own memories.

She won’t be able to keep it.

He was even ready to go on with his story for a while, the one he had started, the one that had proved to be endless.

Sometimes it goes away in the sixth week. Sometimes she makes it to the third month but even then she can’t keep it. It’s just unbearable. She’s had at least four spontaneous abortions already.

Kristóf responded in a very deep voice, as if rumbling from far away.

What does she mean by at least four, doesn’t she know exactly what she’s talking about. And if she does, she should say how many.

Four times.

Then why does she say at least.

Kristóf should stop picking on her.

He is not picking on her.

If she were to become pregnant by someone else, she could probably keep the baby, but not Simon’s.

He didn’t understand what she was talking about; he didn’t want to understand. This statement brought the woman close to him, like a sister, with her amazingly unabashed indecency, but he did not want this, did not tolerate it, and did not desire it. She mesmerized him with her proximity, leaving nothing hidden between them. It would disgust him to make her pregnant, even if the situation was as she said. He’d do anything but that. And he did not want to know these things about her. What do I care, what business is this of mine, this is something between the two of you. He shuddered at the thought, wanted to back out, had a premonition, no, a realization that the woman had actually picked him out for this. He should protest because this would turn into a misunderstanding between them; but he kept silent. Waiting for further developments. Because his greediness was greater. To impregnate the woman, quickly and successfully, though he could not imagine anything more absurd. The most he wanted was to go to bed with her because she attracted him a bit, but now he’d happily give that up too. To hold her by the ass and yank her into himself, but nothing else, a little writhing together, and then to twitter happily with her in a huge sunny bed on a nice summer morning. But frankly, he gave up very quickly on this fancy, because, his excessive desires and colorful imagination notwithstanding, he had accumulated very painful and bitter experiences of himself. He always reached his climax very quickly, and a trait like that has no sunny mornings. His sensitivity became his nemesis; he could not control his sensitivity. He’d be done before they’d even start. In the end he didn’t exactly know what they had meant to start. Perhaps the sheer fact of penetration shocked him, the other body’s resistance, perhaps the rhythm of their common search for the proper position, the wildness of the search, the warmth of the place, its smoothness — or, sometimes, the absence of all these. He did not understand what it was. What was expected of him. If it hadn’t happened with Ilona that morning, and not in some other way, he’d never have learned what it was. Until then he had no idea what he could expect of himself. He was most ashamed — that after such a night he could put Ilona into such a situation, could create the illusion that they might have something to do with each other, and then do it.

And after that, what further vileness might he expect of himself.

Hearing Klára’s story, he quickly forgot the last word of his own infantile inner monologue, and in his mind he picked up the thread here, with Ilona.

There was no place to return to in the deplorably mendacious story of his life; this was the only pure spot, where the darkness was thickest, and he had no more reasonable questions.

It would have been futile to resist, he could not have deflected the other person’s story, and so for the first time in his life he was ready for anything.

It felt like being drawn into a whirlpool, Kristóf should believe her, and forgive her, but she simply must tell somebody about it, she can’t keep it inside any longer. If only she had a girlfriend, but she didn’t, not a single girlfriend. After a spontaneous abortion, the world was empty, as if true-blue British Darwinists had invented it. She loathes the whole business of girlfriends. Determinism takes over everything, and there’s nothing more disgusting or destructive.

Come on, get off it, what does determinism have to do with this, Kristóf snapped in the dark. Rattling off your priggish texts as though they could be of any help to you.

How should I help myself, then.

How should I know.

And for weeks after an abortion like that they can’t even think about having intercourse, at least that.

She had the nerve to use that expression, having intercourse, and again this rotten at least. It really annoyed him. Why such scorn for the world. Kristóf had to catch his breath because of this woman or because of his reverence for Creation.

Why is she using such words, what’s the good of such a fixed idea, she should tell him that.

No matter how much they’d want to, what fixed idea, the woman asked back innocently.

Doesn’t matter, why does she use such rude words.

What sort of words should she use, for the sake of that son-of-a-bitch fucked-up God, if Kristóf won’t hear her out. If he isn’t interested, just say so.

He’s interested, of course he is.

Then what do you want.

He’ll be quiet.

She’d lost count of how many times they’d scraped her out. Have they ever scraped you out, she yelled, and that made her mean, really mean.

It was beyond understanding how she could grant herself so much meanness.

One of her periods lasts into the next, and if Kristóf really wants to know, she can tell him that once she had an extrauterine pregnancy, and that’s why she said, earlier, at least four times. And if one day he has an extrauterine pregnancy, then he’ll understand what she’s talking about. And then she screamed at him, do you understand. One period lasts into the next. Impossible to know whether she’s bleeding because of the scraping or it’s her regular period.

Who knows what’s irregular, anyway.

If she doesn’t seep for two days, they’re very happy.

She barely manages to scrape Simon back from his dumb drinking sprees, she said it like that, scrape him back. Not to mention his stupid womanizing; to spoon him back. He leaves me there, in my blood, and goes off to his women, he still feels like it, and I’m supposed to be the understanding one. Their life became one big running amok; why am I saying became, that’s what it had been from the start. She can barely stand on her feet because of the scrapings, but that’s the only way they can reduce the bleeding. Kristóf may laugh. The hormone treatment stopped her menstruation, not a drop of blood came out of her body, but hair grew between her breasts, and a mustache and beard, she was tearing at them, rubbing resin on them, thinking she’d go out of her mind. And they can’t get to the bottom of it, they have no new ideas, sooner or later her womb will become cancerous, that’s how she said it, my womb will become cancerous, so it has to be scraped.

Then why talk about it so much, why don’t you shut your trap.

Kristóf was beside himself as he yelled, though he was pleading with her, against all his earlier vows; he wanted quiet and wanted the woman not to tell him about these things.

Why aren’t you happy that you’re pregnant at last. And let’s be quiet about it.

Yes, and I can keep standing at the counter all day, dreading whether I’m bleeding or not. And she’s aware that she shouldn’t be so scared. But she is immoderate in everything, in case Kristóf hadn’t yet noticed. What the hell does she need a baby for, what is this big fuss about a baby, she has no answer to this question either.

Why this fucking mushiness.

Don’t talk like that, please don’t.

If Kristóf is so smart, if he knows what she should do now and how she should talk, then let him answer the question. Or if she loses the child, why can’t she be happy about that, let it go if it has to go, it’s probably for the best.

But they wanted to have at least three children.

Have you gone mad, why are you telling me what the two of you want.

Then to whom should I tell it.

All right then, tell me.

Maybe it will be easier after the first one, people say it’s easier after the first one. She’s now exactly in her sixth week and very proud of it, and she’s hopeful again.

And she couldn’t even tell what hurts more.

She is so sensitive.

If Simon did not adore her so intensely, if their love and alliance had not meant more to him than his life — Kristóf should remember once and for all that Simon adores and worships her — then he wouldn’t rave and rant so desperately and probably wouldn’t have to drink and chase after women so much. And have pangs of conscience on top of everything.

He blackmails her with that too.

She doesn’t want even one from him, from such a fickle character, Kristóf should believe her.

Of course she understands him. Still, it hurts terribly.

This is the terrible, incomprehensible paradox in their relationship.

Kristóf did not know what a paradox was, though he had heard the word several times before.

When she bleeds for weeks on end, Simon becomes inhuman. Since they can’t do it — and they can’t, they tried a number of times — she could let him do it by himself, and sometimes she does, for a while. But she doesn’t feel anything then — someone plashing about in her blood, that’s all she feels, nothing more. It’s as if she’s slowly silting up, and why should she let this happen. And when she doesn’t, he goes to have intercourse with other women, gets angry and rebukes her for never but never understanding what’s going on in a man at times like that, and keeps throwing things around and swearing.

But she won’t tell all this to Kristóf, because she can’t humiliate herself so much with her story.

You’re a neurotic, selfish slut.

And maybe she was neurotic, if she couldn’t control her jealousy and couldn’t help Simon.

An indifferent beast, like your mother and your whole class and your entire son-of-a-bitch clan, egoist beasts, all of you.

I resent that. I am on my own.

You people don’t know what human warmth is, or self-sacrifice.

Then go fuck your own social class, you dumb animal, not me.

But that’s not even true, what am I saying, she corrected herself.

Saying things like this about herself would be unjust, because Simon was always a drinker. He had been a drinker way before he had met her, and he drank because he was so much in love or he drank because they happened to be breaking up, he always had a reason to drink. He’s a pig, a boar, she doesn’t know what else to say about him, Simon is a prole wild boar from Angyalföld, she said, as if bragging proudly with her negative judgment, so she could at the same time berate him and love him, love him and worship him. Kristóf must see what a wonderful man this man is. There’s not one man in his family who isn’t a drinker. They all drink, the women too. And why shouldn’t they. She has nothing against drinking; otherwise, it would be impossible to put up with this rotten life and with what sober people thought was reasonable drinking. They drink like fish but, Kristóf must try to imagine this, they don’t drink together on holidays because they’d probably kill each other if they did, so they go drinking separately and then come home one by one, all of them drunk. Let those dumb proles drink themselves to death. She understands them. What’s not to understand here. Now and again she joins them and tosses down a few, right along with them. Only their mother doesn’t drink, she’s a pathologically sober woman, she doesn’t need alcohol, not even to keep her mind sober. For a long time she thought that their love would save Simon from this swamp, this family morass, these wild boars who enjoy grunting and wallowing in their own filth. Simon would gain so much from her that would help him relax, calm down. She’d bear children for him, lots of little girls and boys. Or at least three. She had no intention of fucking up her life with too many stupid births. That’s how she said it, fucking up. This dumb prole family immediately accepted her, she said with feeling, even though they were all, except for a few stray Hungarian Nazis, reds. She needed this, and they sensed her weakness, what with her hating her own mother, and her sister really getting on her nerves with her unbearable habits. Her older brother, well, she feels sorry for him. She has no family, she walked out on them, disowned them all, doesn’t need them. And they’re fairly numerous too, when they come together for Easter or New Year’s it’s like a big funereal show of waxworks, and not a single live being among them. And these stupid proles are all fanatic atheists. But she doesn’t deceive herself. Her mother-in-law disdains her instinctively, in her heart of hearts, in her guts. What she thinks about her is, what is this little high-class cunt doing putting on airs with her permanent bleeds and her affectations, knocking herself to the ground and fainting left and right, pretending to have migraines; she said it like that, high-class cunt.

And that’s what I am, what else could I be.

Where does she get off claiming I don’t have migraines.

And I’m supposed to cast off my real self for these stupid proletarians. I’m not going to change myself for them, I can’t.

But where do you get all this contempt for others, where do you get the courage for it, what do you get out of it.

I do have migraines, yes. One can have migraines even if these people have never heard the term.

Come on, what’s the point of your hatred.

What hatred, what contempt, I haven’t any kind of feeling. I don’t feel anything for anyone. That’s the absolute truth, my lover has desensitized me, that’s the naked truth, what else, and that lover is my love, so there we are.

She kept quiet for a long time, staring somberly before her, and then obsessively began again.

Compared with him you are a coward, you milksop, you I don’t even hate because I have nothing to do with you, you’re a stranger, someone I don’t even know, and that’s it.

She could not solve her life. She thought she could, thought she’d have enough strength for it. And her mother-in-law keeps giving her advice that, despite her best intentions, she cannot accept.

She simply cannot.

And very quietly, then ever more loudly, she kept obsessively repeating that she cannot accept.

Kristóf didn’t know what she was talking about, what would she not accept, and what did her mother-in-law advise her, but that was no longer interesting. With her gloved hands Klára grasped the steering wheel as if to shake it; she could not accept it, no, no, she could not.

Sooner or later she’ll start drinking too.

She cannot accept it and, yes, she is full of hatred. She doesn’t know what to do with their prole pieces of advice, she hates her miserable life and she’d be glad to blow it all up. If she had any dynamite. Simon would probably be better off with a strong woman, one of those clumsy, wide-hipped bitches. While she can’t even bring a child to full term, a real shame.

I am a dumb little high-class cunt.

Nevertheless she cannot accept it.

That man will kill her.

But even then she cannot accept it.

He has already killed her; because of him she has disowned her entire family.

She cannot accept it, but then why does she love him so much.

Kristóf grasped her hand and shoulder; he didn’t know exactly what he was grasping. To make her stop shaking the steering wheel so senselessly and so he wouldn’t have to be disgusted with her and her every word, or with his own self-hatred. With her body, her mentality, her bluntness, her commonness, with everything she had taken upon herself or forced on herself, with her words. She had soiled everything with her words; he detested her and the scent of the borrowed mink coat disgusted him.

He was not sorry for her.

At least she should stop shaking the steering wheel.

But Klára swept along, almost tearing herself away from Kristóf’s calming hands and arms.

She can’t accept it, she shouted in the darkness, while the windshield wipers kept slowly flapping back and forth.

Don’t you touch me, she shouted in the darkness, I won’t be responsible for myself if you dare to touch me, not one finger.

I can’t accept it, no, I cannot.

I don’t want your touch.

Oh, please don’t be so good to me, you, you goody-goody sensible little boy, you make me laugh.

His main task was not to protect the miserable creature from her hysterical eruption and its tectonic force, but to overcome his own shocked physical aversion. It was as if he were responding to the same thing with his own aversion, saying exactly the same thing. Not only don’t I want to make you pregnant, I don’t even want to touch you. Or he should get out of their filthy, cold car because he’d really had enough of her, and just leave. Although he couldn’t say where he’d go. And never see this shameless woman again. He seized her firmly to free her, he shook her to let the hysteric come to at last. She shouldn’t add to her troubles with this fit. Bumping against the steering wheel and dashboard, they struggled briefly in the narrow space. His fingers kept slipping on the mink coat, or rather the silk lining of the coat kept slipping on her dress, on her bare skin, it slipped backward, he couldn’t get a grip on it, could not find one; Andria Lüttwitz’s lousy mink coat slipped down, stripping her bare.

She swept the young man’s arms off her again, but she could neither know nor see how successfully.

Their desperation no longer had personal boundaries.

They grasped each other with both hands, to keep each other from being able to grab or put up a defense. Neither one could tell why or against what. Awkwardly they knocked against all sorts of sharp, blunt, and hard surfaces. While they clung to each other with incredible strength, pressing each other to the seat, their fingers keeping them from moving, a powerful sense of strength and grim hanging-on pervaded their skin, their bodies. One couldn’t tell which one was stronger. The mink coat slid off her shoulders and was caught between them, but finally it left her bare neck free, and in the light penetrating from the outside the radiant hills of her breasts in the black dress were revealed to him. With pure muscle power alone, they were getting nowhere. She yanked her head away from the kiss, even though Kristóf wanted nothing more than to avoid it, to avoid her lips, fragrant with the heavily applied lipstick.

Don’t you dare touch me, whispered the full, round, well-painted lips with their vertical grooves and the maddeningly white teeth in this mutual stupor of resistance. He wanted first to kiss her neck, despite the woman’s strong objection, though he didn’t know why. Suck it in, with its fragrance, then quickly if clumsily lick it clean, as if atoning for his aggressiveness; then senselessly, completely senselessly, nibble and bite all around this inviting, glistening part of her body; but he was also ready to stop at once since there was something extremely servile in him, childlike, beastly, something he did not feel or had no reason to feel for Klára, and it was impossible for him to do something that was not authentic and never would be. Then they bit at each other, painfully and awkwardly, as though they’d lost any inhibition about biting. And by now they were each in their proper place in the universe. Somehow they had to nibble their way across the other’s face, flitting to nose, chin, ears, eyebrows, and jaws, to pat and feel the elevations of the unknown celestial body. At the same time — almost unconsciously, a little ashamed and reluctant — they emitted all sorts of word remnants, incomprehensible to the other.

Until they found lips, which seemed never to have existed before, and then they were surprised to arrive so suddenly at the center of their mutual sensations.

It was too much.

Her lipstick was too flavorful for Kristóf.

The squeezing of their fingers did not let up.

On each other’s lips, having barely dipped into each other, they recoiled.

I’ll break in half, let me go, her whispering lips demanded.

Because of the steering wheel or gearshift or their own excitement, their bodies were wedged into impossible positions as they panted at each other. Now they didn’t know what to do with each other or with their reflexes, and therefore didn’t know what should come next; the obstacle may have been their own excitement. Yet their lips foolishly returned and opened into each other, alluringly and threateningly, which relieved the tension and the feeling that they were infinitely helpless and ridiculous.

But at least they shouldn’t let their tongues do as they pleased; they should retract them. They mustn’t lose their manners or concede their dignity; they must not easily surrender their independence. It would have been intolerable to get stuck to each other by tangled, stiffening tongues.

Their tightly gripped fingers could not let go, and that sealed their discomfort.

I lied to you.

Kristóf had to say this out loud, and he did, almost directly into her mouth, that he had lied.

What did you lie about; the temperature of the woman’s voice seemed to fall as she asked this.

I lied, but I don’t know how or why.

You’ll probably tell me.

I will, but frankly it really bothers me, it’s such a primitive lie, and that makes me such a lousy person. And now I have to tell you, please don’t be angry, I’m ashamed and I hate myself for it.

Come on, out with it, let’s have it, come on.

It’s not the School of Physical Education where I’m studying.

Klára said nothing, turned silent and stiffened.

What an ass you are, she said quietly a moment later, more calmly and contentedly than before.

I wanted to impress you.

I was wondering about that a little, because I heard from Terike that you were going to some teachers’ college.

I wanted to say something better than that, I admit it, to look stronger than I am, because I’m weak. I have no will of my own, believe me.

Laughable, she said, peacefully and contentedly, how laughable you are. All men are equally laughable, them and their wills.

I know, but I don’t even have a will.

And you’re laughable too, and how.

I know.

Why must every man be so laughable.

But women don’t lie less than men.

I don’t care about women, Klára answered, on the attack, thrusting her lips dangerously close to his. I am not a woman but myself, I am alone, just me, and don’t forget it.

Don’t threaten me, because I’m not afraid of him.

Look who’s getting on his high horse.

I can’t open myself more than this with you.

Your lies don’t surprise me, and I don’t care about them, you understand.

But it did move you a little, you must admit.

You can go ahead and lie again, don’t worry about it.

They hesitated about exchanging at least one little kiss before he replied. As if they were weighing what was more important, the kiss or the words.

I can promise you, if you want me to.

I’ll give you full autonomy in lying, if in nothing else.

They had a good laugh at this, which freed them briefly from the threatening urge to kiss, though their fingers did not loosen.

I’ll never go to bed with you, Klára continued, serious and calm because she’d decided to rely on words. Don’t get your hopes up about that.

I won’t.

You can still be a very good friend if you behave yourself, but in my book you’re a marked person, and that’s that.

I know. That’s why I told you about the lie.

Suddenly Klára felt a strong animosity to herself; it made her lips tremble. As she kept looking at this hapless young man. Once again she had managed to steer herself into an impossible situation. For her, men — except for Simon — meant nothing but impossible situations, concerning which her upbringing had provided no advice or suggestions.

Come on, what do you know, she asked impetuously.

I’m done with such things.

Come on, what kind of things are you done with.

I don’t want to go to bed with anyone anymore, I know that, and not with you either. I’m over that now. You definitely don’t have to be afraid of me.

You’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Even if I don’t, that won’t change the situation much.

They were quiet, and neither of them could have said how they’d wound up here.

Once again she had managed to pick up a weakling, a little liar who strutted not his manhood but his vulnerability. How could she find a worthy partner besides Simon, why does she demand such impossibilities of herself. These aren’t men. All right, so she’d made a vague attempt, but she should admit defeat, end the effort quickly and retreat in a nice, orderly manner.

At the same time it also occurred to her that Kristóf might be right, even though he really didn’t know what he was talking about. What idiocy it is to consider the urge for intercourse as obligatory. Still, her annoyance and disappointment remained strong, though in the interest of an orderly retreat she should free herself of both.

Maybe, she said very quietly, feeling impelled to defend herself, I am too reserved and too sentimental, and that’s not a lucky combination, I admit.

The other one remained silent. I spoil everything, she added obligingly.

After this distancing sentence everything cooled back down to a normal temperature. Kristóf tried to analyze what she’d said but in his haste found only its emotional sources, not its sense. She wanted to avoid him, but how far at this point could her avoidance go. Their feet were cold and they were both shivering in the unheated car. Their fingers could loosen now and separate. It took a long time before each hand regained its independent existence within its own contours. Klára, with her involuntarily unleashed anger, tried to pull the mink coat back but couldn’t — an effort at least as unsuccessful as her distancing remark had been. Then, with the same anger and just to succeed at something, she turned off the windshield wipers.

We’ll have a vodka there, across the street, come on, stop moping. We’re not going to mope over a little thing like this, are we.

Who’s moping, Kristóf replied mulishly, and frankly it’s not such a little thing, but I wouldn’t mind having a vodka.

They smiled politely at each other, content with their little verbal gratifications and with finding their way back to familiar conversational tones.

I frightened you, didn’t I. I’m a raving lunatic, said Klára in a voice whose tone did not enforce the meaning of the words. I frightened you from the first moment, but at least I’ve managed to spit things out in front of someone and lighten the burden of my soul.

Kristóf made no reply; perhaps Klára did not even expect one.

She took the key from the ignition, found her silver-clasped chamois handbag — a handy little number studded with big colored pearls which her grandmother, dressed in white, must have carried at famous balls or soirées in her youth; they slammed the car doors behind them and were on their way. The stormy air and the spray lashing their faces not only felt good but were redeeming judgment itself. There is the wind, the rain, the darkness, the city, the storm; yes, the sober outside world may have changed a little, but there is a world nevertheless, and its darkness can exist independent of the darkness of the two of them.

It now shows the unknown features of its old familiar face, a face much more exciting than their own. Out here, out of the car, they felt a little bored with each other and with that whole impossible coexistence they’d left behind in the car along with their souls and their inner nature.

A small neon sign shone dimly on the other side of the wet road, the multicolored name of the place and a childish stylization of the sun; they had to go down two steps to the Sunshine. From the doorway a surprising sight greeted them. The city was empty and they hadn’t seen anyone on the streets, only broken branches and roof tiles, pieces of plaster and ripped-off gutters strewn everywhere, but here, behind the purple broadcloth curtains and purple windbreakers, the tiny bar was jammed with people, smoke, noise, and music. A drummer and a pianist were pounding on their instruments, the latter also cooing into a microphone.

Seeing the two of them enter, he moaned, and inserted into his English text, my dear fellow humans, may I have your attention please, he sang, dargije tovarishchi i druzyah, he added, interrupting the melody, two pieces of fresh meat have arrived at the market. Kristóf and Klára laughed along with the other customers and, embarrassed, tried to figure out whether this rudeness really did refer to them.

Who else could it have referred to.

They were being looked at and, having no choice, they showed themselves to their spectators, jostling among the indifferent strange bodies until they found a little space for themselves.

Establishments from the prewar world had stayed on in Pest for a long time. The downtown brasseries were Francophile places — until their characteristic sofas and mirrors were thrown out — while the bars were Anglophile pubs; one of these latter was called Old Boys.

Back at the beginning of the century, Budapest’s high society* had lived and played in this neighborhood; their tennis courts, riding trails, and clubs were just a stone’s throw away: the largest and most famous one, the Park Club, on Stefánia Boulevard, only a few steps away from the Old Boys. Anyone leaving a garden party at the Park Club after midnight under the influence could always press himself into this place. The Old Boys, with its black musicians, was considered very modern, sports-clubby, and fashionable. Since that time it had shed its name and changed its main purpose several times, though for nighttime functions it retained its sportive character. In the postwar-coalition days* it was still called the Old Boys, and became infamous in the black-market world until a nasty shooting incident caused it to be shut down for a few years. One could buy nylon stockings, chewing gum, jewelry, quite exceptional objets d’art, and Swiss watches there. Customers were shown the merchandise in the ladies’ toilet or under the table, and the staff obviously cooperated with the merchants.

As the Sunshine, it was one of the rare places in Budapest that managed to retain not only its interior furnishings but also its style and something of its erstwhile milieu. Its highly polished wainscoting had not been removed, even right after the siege, when the wood could have been used for heating; the long-legged easy chairs with their handsome little footrests and the long-legged small tables also remained. During the day it was annoyingly bright, and that along with the dubious public buying and selling made a most peculiar impression; but at night it was different, when the sconces with their wax-paper shades frugally emitted faint glows.

The sunken dance floor had room for only a few clinging couples, moving in the light of a pale-red spot hanging from the mirrored ceiling. Wrapped in smoke, the dancers swayed and hovered at the same level with the heads of guests seated at the bar and tables, and thus a feeling of improbability came over anyone coming down the stairs from the street-level entrance; the place looked crazy, with its warm lights and distorting mirrors. Kristóf and Klára found a place near the piano but not at a table, so they had to rest an elbow on the open instrument.

The piano was the only object in the entire place that received harsh white lighting.

They were not talking.

The older, bored-looking waitress amiably advised them — her voice drawing out the vowels — not to drink vodka today but gin fizzes.

Her typical Pest accent, slightly singsong, lent a sarcastic flavor to everything she said.

On account of today being a national holiday, they were handing out lemons at the central office.

All three of them had a good laugh at this — that the central office handed out anything, let alone lemons.

They had their own share of the piano’s white light, which exposed them to the other guests, exposed their shared giggles.

Where do you know her from, Kristóf asked after the waitress with her dyed blond hair left them.

I don’t really know, Klára replied, but maybe from somewhere.

Obviously she wasn’t telling the truth, and didn’t make anything of it.

Quietly they rebuked themselves for spoiling everything with every word — silence or even transparent prevarication was better. Every word acquired an offensive edge. Even though they were thinking of two different things and not blaming each other. And they could not talk about it, if only to keep from spoiling things even more. They kept looking at each other. No trace of fondness or love remained on their faces. Mirrorlike surface of motionless water. They both felt they’d behaved shockingly over the previous hours, their frivolity had been shocking, and there was no point in adding further shocks to the situation. They could not account for their behavior.

No wonder they had frightened each other senselessly and unforgivably. And mainly they had prattled and argued too much. They had made themselves vulnerable and had betrayed the one they loved.

Why had they become so common and shameless.

The people drinking and dancing around them had the impression that the couple in the piano’s spotlight were in the midst of a final breakup, trying to examine what their relationship had been in the past and getting a taste of how shocking it had been.

As they looked at each other impassively, accompanied by drums and piano, their emotional life was changing. In the windy outdoors they had experienced something of their freedom’s devastating power, but in here, under each other’s gaze, they were no longer people existing separately.

Their self-control was working perfectly well, no problem there, and nothing escaped their attention, yet they offered to each other, and to each other alone, some flavors and signs of their existence beyond their neutralized expressions and impassive features. No one could say Klára Vay wasn’t conspicuous — with her big hair, huge eyes, round and heavily painted lips, her mink coat now nonchalantly thrown off her shoulders and revealing a plunging neckline and blindingly white skin, her clinging, frighteningly short dress, immoderately high-heeled and pointed shoes, her shapely calves, little-girlish figure, strong hips and powerful thighs — her body’s anatomical contradictions or disharmony. As they came in, Kristóf had been very anxious about the challenge created by Klára’s appearance, and about people seeing him in the company of such a conspicuous phenomenon. He saw clearly and he felt on his skin that Klára’s beauty and unpardonable elegance made him look ridiculous.

Which turned him into a little prick.

Which in some laughable way he had to be proud of.

That such a dumb little prick’s been dealt such a woman. As if he had been her page, escort, and secret lover for years. Or might nurse realistic hopes of becoming her true lover one day.

At their very first appearance together in public Klára shouldn’t be allowed to see how moved and awed he was. That is why he looked about with a neutral, noncommittal gaze, so as not to reveal his desperate situation to these other people, the total fiasco and catastrophe that until now he had managed successfully to circumvent.

They both hit on the right expression.

They did not look shocking enough to hold curious eyes for very long; after a while inquiring eyes were duly averted. The two of them remained shocking and unbearable at most only to themselves. No one bothered to weigh the obvious age difference between them as a factor in the possible breakup. What people might have considered awful for the couple was that from now on they wouldn’t be able to get along without each other, and wouldn’t be able to account for this either. They weren’t holding hands, as if the glasses they each carried in one hand made this impossible; their coats hung off the backs of the high chairs. Their bodily stillness, or the complete absence of verbal communication, separated them from the dense human crowd around them. There might have been a chance to rescind or cancel some of the preceding events, but not in this present reality.

The ever-present moment was more powerful, and under its weight the significance of the stories they’d told each other was generously reduced.

As though the stories could be forgotten, had become ephemeral sound effects, tiny noises of history, nothing more.

As to the glasses, they really had no place to put them down. They stared at the innards of the piano, the hammers working on the wires and their own reflections in the black lacquer of the propped-up lid.

To look at anything but each other.

The first thing they noticed was Kristóf’s knee touching Klára’s, though he had neither moved nor wanted this to happen. He said, pardon me, and he was truly mortified by his rudeness. If only this was happening between them for the first time, but it was not the first time. The vacuum created between their knees when he quickly withdrew his sucked in their bodily sensations and consumed their physical reality — flesh, clothes, and all.

Their pitiful isolation ended. Or they were only following on each other’s bodily surfaces what had already occurred in their souls but what in good conscience they could not yet accept; but they could not have known that.

It seems probable that the soul is first, followed by physical sensation, and only then comes the decision.

After some time — how long they could not say, though this was not the first time that time had passed like this for them — Klára’s knee touched Kristóf’s knee, for which she hastily apologized. It was more as if her upbringing was speaking for her. Actually they could have laughed about this, but they didn’t. Sunk into a serious mutual muteness, they continued the assessing and weighing processes they had begun, on and in each other, occurring way beyond the realm of common sense. As if they were weighing the proportions of something that could not be seen with the naked eye or deflected with bare hands. It was not possible to get to the bottom of it, it was full of little surprises; pupils dilating, they were amazed.

They were also thinking about something far from what they observed in each other’s face, figure, or motionless limbs.

For a good long time observation and thinking proceeded on parallel tracks.

Perhaps twenty minutes went by before their arms, resting on the sharp rim of the piano, began to move and their fingers found their way back to where they could hook into one another. Which did not come close to making them happy. They had bestowed on each other their leaden fatigue and sadness, had given up their sense of independence, the kind of independence that until then Klára had not relinquished to anyone, not even to Simon.

Kristóf had given up his once before, but only for ten minutes, with Ilona. Those ten minutes stuck out in his life like a bone from a bad wound. The child had awakened on the bed in the maid’s room that summer morning, and they had triumphantly completed their act, the child’s countenance open and lively, since at the moment they had no choice, there could be no way back.

As if each of their fingers, separate from the other fingers, had several issues to deal with. So many restrained emotions and so many hitherto suppressed thoughts had found their way into what they now were feeling that they almost shouted with excitement and clapped each other’s palm. At this thoughtless juncture they noticed that the dancing couples had returned to their tables. And the two of them were no longer exposed at the edge of the blinding white light, because the musicians were taking a break and the spot had been turned off. And only now did the two fools notice that in the benevolent darkness, which they accepted as an unexpected gift, they had for some time come close together and were holding each other’s knee, their recently rejected knees; they noticed all this only in retrospect, as it were. Now they acknowledged that unaccountable things could occur in a split second, in the blink of an eye. Although they would have liked to inch their way up, higher on the thigh, toward the groin, these areas having a stronger attraction, and especially to feel knees clasping thighs mutually, but they weren’t appropriately determined about this. As reasonable, adult, and responsible persons equipped with prepared movements, they faced each other as if short-circuited somewhere between rough action and inner compulsion. Unaccountable inhibitions stood in their way. Not because strangers might see and curb their actions, but because their mutually gained new freedom and their lost independence were at stake.

And it could not evolve in small increments, secretly, in unguarded moments. Because they did not know what was supposed to happen since what was happening now was very different from many of their rational experiences.

And if the waitress had not very politely taken away their empty glasses, opaque with lemon and sugar, laughing rather too intimately and maternally, they would have continued for at least another forty minutes, sitting stiffly in front of other people, frozen at each other’s melting point, constrained and expectant.

That is when they realized that they each had another hand, and had had it all along, holding a long-empty glass.

This was not vacant time but time full of event, each moment filled to the brim.

Finally they grasped each other’s free hand. Only then did they notice how attentive the waitress had been, not only addressing Klára in the familiar form but also calling her by her rarely used nickname.

They could stay no longer; suddenly they had to leave as quickly as possible; out on the street they ran straight into the winds coming from two different directions, then found each other again, this time not only in great haste but also clinging to each other along the entire length of their bodies, shyly and sweetly.

And then, with their coats open, they ran again in different directions into the big, darkly blinding void.

By the time they drove into the deserted downtown area, their excited breathing had subsided.

They got out in front of a small mansion on Újvilág Street and stood under trees swaying in the wind, but even there they said nothing to each other. At moments their mutual silence seemed hostile and at other moments just the opposite, soaring and moving with the power of their mutual discoveries. In any case they seemed to be coddling each other in temporal terms, both of them wanting to prolong their time together.

Klára lifted out the wine and vodka bottles from behind the backseat, four in all, and handed them to Kristóf, but then she took back two of them for herself. By sharing the work in this way they seemed to go on fondling each other. That is how they went up to the second floor, carrying real bottles, immersed in the loveliness of their first mutual undertaking.

She walked ahead of Kristóf as if she knew her way around, but Kristóf watched only her calves and ankles and how she stepped up the worn-out stairs, one by one.

It wouldn’t have occurred to them to talk about anything in the dimly lit staircase.

Already on the first landing they could hear bits of music, thumping, the din and humming of people crammed into the apartment.

By the clock on the nearby Town Hall it was almost eleven. The clock would strike on the hour, and the old mechanism was preparing with loud clatters for the four strikes that would fill the narrow street, but here there was no day or night because the party had been in full swing for two days running and no one could tell how long it would go on.

People did not know where they were going, to whose party, they had only heard about their hosts. But that was the interesting and wonderful part of it — the anarchy. There were no rules anymore, and no rules meant no rules. When there are no units of measurement, there is no time either, and we can’t tell when the reckoning of time stopped. All they knew was that the ancient tailor whose trade sign had adorned the facade of the handsome little mansion since the late nineteenth century, who made splendid evening jackets, tailcoats, smoking jackets, and formal suits, and whose shop was now run, theoretically, by his grandson while he, darkly tanned and wrinkled, was shooting the breeze on the terraces and in the corridors of the Lukács Baths with old people who were in every way younger than he, that this tailor had a few days ago emptied his second-floor apartment and third-floor workshop, which — in return for his long and faithful service — his family had been allowed to retain as leased property, though they could not own them, since the Land Registry records showed that they’d been taken away from him. No one any longer needed the magnificent garments whose specialist he was, not even in the highest circles. He had made tailcoats and jackets for Mátyás Rákosi that required all his professional experience, but János Kádár, with his quite good build and carriage, bought his suits from the Red October Clothing Factory’s tailoring workshop, and other high-ranking functionaries followed the leader’s austere, plain example.* The old tailor could not imagine a world in which nobody was interested in shirtfronts, dickeys, cufflinks, silk vests, and the cut of lapels. And regarding the modern lines and fashionable new patterns, his family slowly lost their courage. The new tailors and assistants simply didn’t have a feeling for true tailoring. With the family’s exceptional connections, they managed to obtain emigrant visas to go at least as far as Vienna. Once there, they would see, perhaps there they could still make it, maybe their skills were still needed. Most of their objets d’art had been declared national property and been turned over to the state. They were allowed to take hardly anything with them; fortunately their money, kept in foreign currencies, along with the best of their jewelry, had been smuggled out of the country before the war.

Both Klára and Kristóf were used to going to completely unfamiliar places where people were celebrating a fiasco or solemnizing a devastation. Yet a few years earlier no one would have shown up uninvited anywhere. But these decorum issues had ended in Budapest. One could virtually name the hour when this had happened. It was not that no one now hewed to the old obligatory codes of behavior — some people did — but that it was impossible to know who would comply, when, or why somebody would not, or even what should be complied with.

A lean figure in a white shirt was lying on the steps, his torso reclining against the grating that surrounded the elevator shaft.

Hesitantly they stopped above him.

At the very same instant, amid noise and music, the tall wide door of the apartment upstairs opened, and along with thick clouds of smoke a loud group of people emerged, shouting back and forth.

Stop, how many times do I have to tell you.

Above their shoulders one could see that the apartment hallway was also full of people; the wonderful chaos was complete.

I’m afraid you’re dreaming.

Different kinds of music reached them simultaneously: somebody, in a whiny voice, was demanding love, a man’s voice on a tape recorder or record; and somebody deep in the apartment was pounding away on the piano with great conviction and screaming at the same time as if beside himself, or anyway it sounded as if the pianist and the screamer were the same person. People in the group streaming out the door were all talking at once, each taking great pleasure in speaking over the other voices. The group included young women and somewhat older men, all quite gentle, almost shy figures and all of them completely drunk. As they started down the stairs, they too stopped above the figure lying on the steps, held on to one another, swayed back and forth — which was not without danger because their hands and arms were filled with empty bottles — groping for support on the walls, banisters, and one another. They sobered up a bit in the drafty staircase and began to giggle at this other drunk stretched out on the steps, but what the fuck.

They not only appeared to be but were kindly souls, if a little too loud. They had banded together with the purpose of collecting all the empty bottles from between people’s feet, redeeming them, and, at the last moment before sobering up, buying more booze with the deposit money. If their hands hadn’t been full, they would have pulled up the figure lying on the steps and taken him back to the apartment. This would not have been empathy, goddamn it, but some kind of communal spirit, of sportsmanlike good will.

They all saw that this man was not only drunk but weeping, big dumb ass. One arm was wrapped around his head — maybe he had some injury — and he was pressing his face to the rusty grating of the elevator shaft, his back convulsing sporadically.

Well, let God put his cock where he wants to, but this guy sure has some big-ass grief.

Others fumbled awkwardly with their bottles, trying to put them down on the stairs, but in their inebriation they could not figure out which steps were closer or farther away, or they feared the stone paving was too hard for the glass, and the whole thing turned into an awful clanking and sniggering.

Hold it, Kristóf said quietly, I think I know this guy.

At the sight of his filled bottles, the ones above him on the staircase laughed loudly, cheered, and neighed that now they didn’t even have to go out because relief had arrived, looka here, damn it, they’re bringing vodka in huge bottles.

Klára fumbled with her bottles and, giggling along with the others, warned that she might at any second drop them both.

The pretty miss has nothing to worry about, they’ll be happy to help her.

When it comes to booze they’re willing to sacrifice the life of their friend.

They might sell their bosom buddy’s whore of a mother, but even Kristóf couldn’t do anything with this drunken animal.

A nasty piece of work, they laughed stridently, all of them together, they know him well.

A pale-faced small young woman at the top of the stairs spread her arms wide and, nobody knew why, yelled into the bare and echoing nocturnal staircase, her voice surprisingly loud, that she would kiss every ass, she’d do it willingly, there’s no ass she wouldn’t kiss and lick, but nobody should expect her to put a good face on it or be happy about it.

But people paid no attention, and acted as if they hadn’t heard her drunken nihilism. And the clinking noises increased as they quickly left their empty glasses all over the place.

Somebody kicked over a bottle, which set other bottles rolling, but none of them broke.

They left quickly with their booty and went back to the apartment with the wine and vodka; the clanking sound of their return echoed in the stairwell for a long time.

If not for Kristóf and Klára’s arrival, these people, at the risk of sobering up, would have marched across stormy Rákóczi Road all the way to Teréz Boulevard to get deposits on their empty bottles in the only food shop in Budapest that stayed open twenty-four hours a day.

Everything was all right — just as things unfolded in the simplest possible way in the following half hour.

By then, no one took the future seriously anymore.

The crowd in the big apartment readmitted the unknown company, along with Klára, and left the hallway door open behind them. And in a place like this, issues such as acquaintance or stranger or introduction or any other stupid formality simply didn’t exist.

Not because fellow feeling had suddenly become popular, but because everyone was equally indifferent to everyone else.

Simply shit on everything.

Fuck it, man. I shit on your filthy mug.

What makes you think I don’t shit on everybody.

To be exact, the magic moment had arrived late in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 1956, shortly before nightfall. The curfew was still very much in force, and because of piles of debris in the middle of Ferenc, József, Teréz, and Lipót boulevards waiting to be carted away, streetcars had not yet started running and there was only just enough room for buses and cars to get by. At some places collected debris was piled on sidewalks, at other places, where they had not even started to clear away the results of the bombing, bare beams, bathtubs, remnants of chandeliers and furniture were spilled and strewn everywhere, flowing and crashing into one another. The furnishings of collapsed apartments and burned-out businesses.

In theory, these streets and roads were supposed to be empty by eleven o’clock at night, because traffic halted at ten, superintendents were supposed to close and lock all main entrances by half past ten and check, no, report, on who came in at the last minute; during the night only the booted footsteps of police and special antiriot units could be heard.

Occasionally a shout — a solitary shot too.

But on that late afternoon the number of people in the streets kept increasing and they were vociferous. As if they had a common plan for everyone to head to the boulevards. It was cold and dry, the sky heavily overcast and public lighting sorely lacking. It was impossible to know where so many people were coming from in the rapidly descending darkness.

These people were not making demands or demonstrating against anything; they just climbed up on the dangerous piles of debris, and did so silently, not talking to one another or anyone. They drank; and those who were already drunk yelled at the top of their voices. To which the authorities could have no special objections, which is to say the yelling, which should have been quickly forbidden, was tacitly permitted because people were not yelling together; everyone was hooting or yelling for himself. Some brought their children’s toys with them, the ones that entrepreneurs started making anew only later on, and whistles, which could be found in families everywhere because there was no Young Pioneer* without a whistle and schoolchildren all had them hanging around their necks on red or blue strings; also paper trumpets, drums, baby rattles, clappers, small bells and cymbals, hissing paper snakes, rubber animals for bathtubs that whistled, quacked, or croaked when squeezed — anything that could make noise.

They did not even sing; there was no tune they could have danced to. And they did not congregate or assemble; after all, the alleged right of assembly had been suspended by order of the police, and any gathering of more than three persons was considered a conspiracy against the state.

They shouted into one another’s faces, showed one another their throats and fillings, whistled grinningly and tooted into one another’s ears, spun their clappers next to one another’s ears — and most of them were far from being preadolescent youths.

Silently they offered each other drinks, to make the other person drunk, turn him into an animal, the kind of animal I am.

The whistling at one another, the tooting and yelling at each other were only for themselves; they made the noise for themselves, not for someone else. While silence reigned in the farther reaches of Buda, in Pest the city was once again out on the street. But nothing happened; the light traffic petered out; no one expected or counted on anything, and the infernal noise people were making may have helped them suspend their fear, which is why they didn’t give a damn about the curfew. Everybody drank from everyone else’s bottle without even wiping off the bottle mouths. This was probably the first great dress rehearsal, the dress rehearsal of passive resistance. Well, what infection should they be worrying about. It was impossible to know where all that booze suddenly appeared from, cheap table wines and stinking home-distilled brandies.

This wasn’t a cheerful event; it was anything but pretty; it didn’t even try to flaunt its foulness. It became loudest at midnight, or rather, it just became louder, since no one had any wishes to make and they weren’t going to sing the national anthem. Long years had to pass before it occurred to people that one might want to wish somebody something good for the New Year. It wasn’t that this gloomy event was not forbidden, but that it would have been impossible to give orders to fire into the midst of so many drunken people.

And what if it was possible, so what, who gives a shit.

It was getting colder, well below freezing, and the number of people kept growing even after midnight; the noise as well as the crowd’s unbridled inner muteness steadily increased.

They were camping on top of ruins, lighting smelly little signal fires along the boulevards, using flammable parts of the debris. The snow, which had begun to fall around ten o’clock, became quite thick by midnight and was trampled into slippery slush by many shoes and boots. Snow remained at the peaks of ruins and on the charred guts of buildings and vehicles, and it shone brightly in the light of the fires.

Around two in the morning, the boulevards began to empty out, and slowly the snow could settle on the sidewalks, deadening the sounds of the few insistent shouters.

When dawn came, one could still hear some lone tooting in the distance.

Only during the following day, the first day of the New Year, did one have the impression that in the wake of all this there would follow only eternal night and deafened streets.

But all this happened long ago, and it might not even be true.

Kristóf crouched down on the stairs, close to the boy, who was a few years his senior but similar in build. He grasped his shoulders and shook them, told him to stand up, even threw in a few obligatory swearwords so they’d better understand each other’s bewildering, overflowing feelings; he kept shaking the boy gently, asking him what had happened, while his heart was jumping with joy at seeing him again.

What he wanted most to say was, my sweetest pal, if you only knew how much I’m in love.

It was a good thing Klára had disappeared upstairs in the throng, though he’d have a job finding her.

And he would have told his story on the spot, to give the other boy part of his happiness.

Because he loved him so.

Suddenly he couldn’t remember when and in what circumstances he had seen him last. But he did remember Podmaniczky Street, where the boy had been carrying his ammo box on his shoulder and the water had been turned on again.

But his friend would not let himself be handled, not then and not now, no, he pressed himself against the grating and Kristóf had to struggle with him.

It wasn’t the mere physical contact and not even the pleading but rather the earthly tenderness that convinced him; he broke into a loud, drunken sob, to which the staircase instantly responded with a drunken echo.

As though in reply, someone upstairs whose nerves could no longer endure the sobbing kicked or slammed the hallway door shut.

For God’s sake, tell me what’s happened to you.

Left me, his friend cried, then shouted the words: just up and left me.

Kristóf could not conceive of anyone leaving his friend — about whom he had heard nothing for many long years. This is one of those moments when, of all the things he could not anticipate and from which he felt shut out, what confronted him most clearly was his own naïveté, exposing him to senseless, blunt nothingness.

He recognized instantly that this was not some ordinary lovesickness, not one of the many kinds he was familiar with. The boy’s shirt was white, but his lovesickness stank of tobacco and alcohol. And in his drunken obstinacy he was strong enough to keep from being dragged away.

It was as if he were doing penance with the barbarity of his soul.

The alcohol level keeps him on the surface of pain, maintaining a sufficient degree of physical torment, that is why he has to stay here, that is why he is shouting so destructively.

Kristóf looked at him, amazed and fearful, yet he cradled the familiar shoulders and back on his knees with a certain restraint, since at any minute it might turn out he had made a mistake. The boy might turn around, or he would manage to turn him over, and it would be revealed that he was not Pisti whom he had met on Podmaniczky Street.

Now he was yelling down the elevator shaft that he had been deserted, bawling through the grating.

No matter how hard Kristóf looked, there was no part of the boy that he could have mixed up with someone else’s.

He’d seen him last in Wiesenbad on an ordinary summer morning when, just as he was, in shirt and pants, he’d been taken away from the place under the giant pine trees by a military vehicle with Russian license plates; he resisted and kept pointing to the third floor of the Wolkenstein house, indicating that he wanted to get his things, but he was expertly shoved into the car, with extra care taken not to injure his head; and only the crunching sound of pebbles, the silent peaks of the pines, and the sky with its clouds remained behind him.

Upstairs the boys found all their belongings on the stone floor of the dormitory, the mattresses overturned on the beds, only this boy’s locker was empty, they had taken away all his things along with him.

Left me forever, he shouted. I know it’s forever.

Then Kristóf called him by his name, he no longer had any doubts but wanted to be certain, and he did not feel like swearing anymore.

He would rather be exposed by his blind love.

Pisti, please, he said, pull yourself together, stop making so much noise.

It’s me, knocking on your door, he said, and he was indeed knocking on the boy’s back.

Give me some sensible explanation, what’s happened, who has left you.

And why on earth are you lying on the stairs here.

The drunken figure suddenly swerved, as if to throw his entire stiff body at Kristóf; he probably only now recognized Kristóf by his voice or by the knocking on his back, their old game.

He stared intently, could this really be Kristóf; the strain wrinkled his face.

My dear Pisti, please get up.

You listen to me now, buddy, said the other boy, his voice bullying and almost sober in its sternness, I am not your Pisti.

Kristóf could only stare at him; he said nothing.

And don’t you tell me again that I’m dear to you, he said slowly with a drunkard’s helplessness, and tried to sit up at the same time but only managed to lift his head off the step.

And you know that goddamn well yourself, don’t you, and if I let you have one upside your head, by Jesus, that’d be worse than God’s curse. You know that too, don’t you, little buddy.

He talked as if he had not forgotten that they still had a heavy account to settle.

In fact they had nothing to settle, not then and not now, except perhaps the terrible raw dread with which they had feared that Pisti would be tracked down before he had a chance to leave Wiesenbad.

Fuck it, man, I’m not your dear, I’m telling you, and remember that, goddamn it.

Kristóf, alarmed, could only think that Pisti suspected him of something.

You’re a big shit-head, you know, a ridiculous little fop, Pisti said contemptuously, which reassured Kristóf a bit because the boy could have called him a dirty Jew. A lousy craven shit, that’s what you are, little buddy, he shouted, I’m telling you right here and now, damn it, say it directly, right to your face, I’m not any kind of dear one for a shitty little fop like you.

Until now he must have been pressing his face hard on the grating so as not to throw up, but occasionally he just had to vomit and he did so now, into the elevator shaft.

And Kristóf was not interested in what the boy said in his drunkenness, not in the least.

But his heart trembled that Pisti might have thought he was the one who had betrayed him to the Russians, and in that case how could he clear his name now. If there existed one human being to whom he had never meant, not even in his thoughts, to do anything mean, dishonest, or immoral, it was this boy.

He had gone to several places in Budapest, had repeatedly returned to them over the years, whenever he had a new idea about where he might find him; he never stopped inquiring about him, but the possibility of betraying him or turning him in had never been in the cards, not even in his darkest hours. He had gone to Csepel many times to find at least the place near the old beach where Pisti’s grandmother lived. Every morning they climbed across the fence, at least in Wiesenbad, where they slept next to each other and sometimes told each other stories all night; at least that’s how he had told the story about his grandmother.

He found the poplars.

But no matter what Pisti suspected him of, Kristóf could not suddenly give up on him now.

All right, I admit, you’re not very dear or kind right now, and he laughed kindly into Pisti’s threatening, laughable face, while his naïve heart trembled at the terrible thought, but please get up.

As if he suspected himself of the kind of betrayal that Pisti, in his mind, might have already suspected of him.

Pisti wanted to say something, to answer, but he could hardly steady his heavy head on his neck. He had such a big head, a hard head. On his drenched face, imprinted with the pattern of the grating, and on his twisted nose there was mucus and pap of undigested food mixed with tears.

May the big black dog fuck you, buddy, that’s what should fuck you, pal, if you understand what I mean. He still had enough strength to drag this much out of his own dark malice.

Kristóf did not understand this, but with every word the disgusting sourness of the undigested contents of Pisti’s stomach hit him in the face.

His head was wobbling dangerously and Kristóf grabbed him by his shoulders to keep his head from knocking against the stone stairs. Even now the boy was still dear to him, together with his stench and his vomit stuck on the grating. He could not but rejoice and be cheerful about having found him, being able to see him again. He could not take seriously the possibility that now, in this condition, or during the time that had elapsed before, Pisti had come to suspect him. Because, in fact, Pisti had told him everything. And even if he took everything seriously, what of it, Pisti was here, not hanged as so many others had been. He failed to make him sit up; the obstinate animal would not sit up but flopped exhaustedly on the stone stairs.

Kristóf reached for his handkerchief to clean off some of the boy’s filth; he would take care of him.

He raised Pisti’s rather disgusting, smelly head by the chin, kneeling next to him on the steps.

Left me, whispered Pisti, sunk in his angelically drunken innocence, I don’t have a lover anymore.

Kristóf turned the head toward him a little to wipe off the muck, a move that Pisti could have felt as maternal.

Fucked me first, though, he whispered, blubbering and whimpering idiotically, did nothing with me except use me, goddamn it, he yelped, d’you understand, buddy, used me for nothing else, ever, fucked me and left me, that’s all.

Kristóf somehow heard this, this surprising confession. Which, according to language rules, he could understand only as meaning that another man had made use of Pisti, some selfish character; but still, it was as if he hadn’t heard it. As if he hadn’t heard it while wiping the dear one’s face with one of the immaculately white batiste handkerchiefs, rinsed, washed, gently starched, and ironed to perfection by Ilona.

Somehow he did not dare allow the things the drunken boy was talking about to reach his consciousness.

Even if they had, he would not have understood them. All his irregular experiences of long years notwithstanding, his heart and soul remained completely innocent. He believed he had to become familiar with the world and had little choice as to which parts of it he would know; and when he did come to know them, he thought no, this could not have happened to Pisti.

He must be misunderstanding or misinterpreting something, since his own experiences had been impossible.

And to stifle his shame, he swore loudly, blaspheming God, taunting him to fuck him.

What’s this circus for, he began to revile Pisti, as if becoming drunk with his own urge to swear, why is he such a drunken animal and why can’t he behave decently. Should be a little bit of a gentleman. He reached under Pisti’s armpits to lift him up, laughed at him, rebuked him, for the sake of God’s cunt, don’t let yourself go like that.

Come on, stand up already.

But the drunken boy, with a drunkard’s hideous delight, kept resisting, he will not get up, no, he won’t, he will stay where he is till the end of his life.

Well, I’ll be dipped, shouted Kristóf with no less delight, making the stairwell echo loudly again.

Who the hell is Kristóf to tell him what to do, Kristóf of all people. A little jism jockey like him telling him what to do, eh.

Hold me back, somebody.

Can’t you see, little buddy, what a filthy drunken animal I am, and if you don’t watch it I’ll start swearing at your mother in a minute.

Great, so that’s what you’ll do next.

Because he had told everything to Pisti.

Stop the acting, pal. The little boy would like to play good boy from the Red Cross. But fuck it, man, I will tell the whole fucking Red Cross who you are.

Right now, dumbbell, the question is, where did you leave your coat.

The truth is you’re a big jism jockey and not the genuine goody-goody you’d like to pretend you are. I checked you out, boy. I got your number. I’ll tell the Red Cross the truth about you, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

He felt like yanking him up, to avoid inflammation of the pelvis, sit up already, but the drunken boy tore himself away from Kristóf’s hands with such a fury that it seemed he might hit him.

Where in the hell would he get a coat, could somebody from the Red Cross have given him one.

But Kristóf would not let go of him, he did not want to.

He doesn’t have a coat, he shouted, in tears, doesn’t even deserve a coat from the Red Cross.

For a moment Kristóf let go of the shouting person, but only to give in to an even more impossible compulsion.

He took the drunken man’s head between his cool palms and wanted to say something nice, kind, touching and encouraging. That he loves him and his heart is full of love and he would be happy to give some of it to him because he has so much.

Or perhaps to say no more than one would say to a grumpy child.

But this did not come to pass, because Pisti yelled into Kristóf’s face, suffused with love and deep emotion, that never, never would he get up from here, he would not do him such a big favor as to stand up, let his cock stand up for him.

He made the stairwell echo infernally again. Actually he was just a sack chock-full of infernal stuff.

I know more about you, little pal, than you might think.

Kristóf watched, observed how these unknown, humiliating, and painful feelings were being shouted into his face, emotions of which he had known nothing. But now at last he was getting to know them and he couldn’t claim to be disinterested.

Then he let go of the dear one’s head, made rather funny and pitiful by all the shouting.

However, it showed many frightening and shameful aspects too.

Then drop dead on your own. I just ask you to go quietly, without waking up the whole neighborhood.

He was done with him, but he didn’t have the heart to leave him there in that condition.

Though it was futile to plead with him in that condition.

Pisti’s big head dropped down dumbly, as if he could not keep it on top of his neck, there above the steps. And Kristóf, straightening up, ready to follow Klára upstairs, unwilling to waste more time on this drunken idiot, felt dizzy.

He hadn’t eaten for God knows how long. He definitely had had no breakfast and probably no lunch either. He let himself flop against the disgusting wall of the staircase, making tiny scales of paint fall off, and waited either to collapse or for the dizziness to pass, he didn’t care one way or the other, it made no difference.

Nothing made a difference.

Vacillating between the giddiness rising from the cavity of his heart and his inexplicable devotion, he went on watching this repugnant stranger.

What is he clinging to if there is nothing to cling to. To his own feelings or to the strange being’s beauty; but was this beauty, of what quality was this beauty.

He had to close his eyes a bit, not to think continuously about something other than what he could see in front of him; he should rather forget his own thoughts.

By the time he opened his eyes, Pisti had slowly sat up and now he looked very surprised. As if he had managed to understand his friend’s thoughts but with a slight delay; of course he did. He propped up his torso with his bare arms resting on his spread knees and kept relatively steady. His head hung down, though, exhausted and reproving.

His unbuttoned white shirt glowed above the filthy gray steps.

Still, Kristóf wanted to tell him what happiness had come his way today, and brag a little about the great future of his love.

The way he saw it, Pisti’s forehead was already radiant, and he felt that Pisti was waiting for a radiant confession.

He would have told him his story to console him but, to their great luck, he didn’t find a single word to do it with. And he now remembered that this rotten Pisti had stolen those girls from him in Wiesenbad, two girls, one after the other, the ones whom he was too shy to approach, which Pisti had instantly sensed, even though the girls were in love with Kristóf. He gave them to Pisti willingly; let him take them in his stead. Somehow his weakness and timidity were in the air no matter how hard he fought against them. His heart ached a little for the girls because, after all, they loved him and not Pisti, one of them, Bärbel Mengel, boisterously, and the other, Ingrid somebody, penetratingly and bashfully. But now, in his dizziness, the erstwhile ache about the girls felt good, that these girls had gone with Pisti instead of him, with nary a thought.

It was very clear that real life consisted of substitutions.

Without them he would not have found Klára, without his timidity, it was clear as daylight.

And he was very grateful to this beastly Pisti for taking them away from him. He was very curious to know what had happened to them.

For a while longer he watched the phenomenon of Pisti’s radiant forehead, and then without a word he left his newly found old friend, did not want to see him, and started up the stairs.

When he walked into the apartment, the throng, sunk in smoke and noise, accepted him, him with his heavy heart. But even years and decades later he was unable to piece together all the things that did or didn’t happen that night.

It seemed to him that he didn’t spend the whole night in the apartment but, along with others, might have gone out on the street several times.

Standing in the wind without his coat on, this he remembered, as well as the bare storm-battered trees, and standing alone among the buildings, staring up at the dark sky.

Perhaps they went over to the Gourmand Restaurant to buy more drinks, or only to have one there, who knows. The bar at the Gourmand stayed open until four in the morning. They wanted him to pay; all right, he paid, but he didn’t remember what he paid for and whom he treated. It definitely was not a place for redeeming bottle deposits.

He took account of these things only in the early afternoon of the next day, when he finally managed to wake up and get dressed.

He was literally startled into wakefulness; he wanted to leave and find Klára, no matter where she was, and that’s when he saw he didn’t have a penny to his name.

Either the people at the party had robbed him or the bartender hadn’t given him his change.

But he did not remember how much he was supposed to pay or for what, or how he got back to the apartment on Teréz Boulevard.

He remembered wanting to wake up while he was still asleep, so he could get going, but he did not know where to look for her, where to begin looking.

One thing was sure: he was lying in his own bed with his own nausea, he could see he was stark naked and without a cover, and if he wanted to avoid vomiting on the bedding he should sit up.

He heard no sounds from the adjacent rooms, everything around him was silent.

The Gourmand, for example, with its rich white tablecloths and gigantic damask napkins, was one of the Francophile places in the city not only because of its furnishings but also because of its unusually short but exquisite menu.

When he had first walked into the unfamiliar apartment and stood lost among the many strangers, he imagined that the space must have been not a hallway but some sort of reception room back in the heyday of the tailoring firm. He had never seen anything like it in this his own native city. And Klára, with a happy smile on her face, was pushing her way out of an inner room and coming toward him, indicating that he should find a secure place to put the mink coat she had borrowed from Andria Lüttwitz, a place where she could also find it; after all, she couldn’t spend the whole evening wearing the coat.

Not a coat rack anywhere.

It was so surprising to see her, to meet her again as if for the first time, even though he already knew what that felt like. What he wouldn’t give for a feeling such as he had for her. He was happy because of her; she filled his entire view so completely that he was positively grateful to himself for it. That is how infinitely laughable his happiness was. And as they went looking for a safe place for the coat the crowd kept pressing them together. It was the kind of thing neither of them had counted on. There was a chance to make contact again; they touched and grabbed each other, felt and cautiously patted and squeezed each other, they kissed and pawed each other quite roughly; they were forced to press forward across each other, and they laughed loud and hard. As if they were supposed to deny all this to themselves. Even if with their every little move they were making progress in this bashfully guarded nothingness, which had neither temporal nor spatial dimensions and therefore remained unfamiliar to them.

They did everything quickly and briefly, making use of strange shoulders and backs, restraining themselves so that it would not occur in front of the others.

They did not know what.

Klára jabbed at the air above their heads, pointing in the direction they should follow.

Kristóf had to admit, she yelled, that it was really stupid to borrow this fucking mink coat.

He admits it, but it wasn’t he who suggested it.

What’s the point of admitting that she did it for him.

Why would she have done it for him.

All right, don’t believe me, but that’s your own stupidity.

Perhaps it was even before this that they reached the kitchen. Where people were spreading things on sandwiches while feeding each other on the remnants. A large, dark-skinned girl told them to go back into the room, they would get their sandwiches there. Without keeping some order, everybody would gobble up everything. Ravenously they devoured the remnants the girl pushed in front of them, investing their deflected energies in this activity. Under each other’s eyes they gobbled up everything — bits of cheese rind, heels of bread, ends of salami, carrots and lettuce, which this large dark girl kept handing them with a hearty laugh from the other side of the table. Then from a piece of waxed paper she fed them some skin and fat of ham. They both happened to like these tidbits a lot, and they begrudged each other the individual bites, taking them out of each other’s mouth. The game they played was that they would not only devour everything, but also cast covetous glances at the food in each other’s mouth, but since this happened to be what they really wanted, it was a little risky for a game. Their voracious hunger was real, the rest was a game for predators. They ate out of each other’s mouth, or at least asked for a little bit of the other’s food. They shared a pickle to go with the ham. To the dark girl’s great joy they kept taking bites of cucumber, inching all the way to each other’s mouth, juice dribbling down their necks. By that time they were barmy and drunk, but only on each other. And with each touch, with the half-chewed food being coaxed out of each other’s mouth, they deferred the impending kiss and touch, as if what had to happen would not happen at all, as if to signal that beyond their lighthearted lack of restraint complete unruliness was waiting for them. Or that at least they were trying to put it off, delay it with something else, or substitute for it with some charming little nastiness or offensive commonplace.

But this must have happened later, because in the kitchen Klára was no longer wearing her mink coat.

They must have forced their way back to their original place.

From the shabby antechamber opened another, more spacious room whose door, closed only minutes earlier, was now wide open. The room was located where in other Budapest apartments the kitchen or kitchen and maid’s room would be. Two clothes racks on wheels, once used by tailors to hang suits ready for fitting, had been left in this room. Not only were the hangers full of coats but many others were thrown haphazardly over them and over the top bars of the racks. In this spacious room opening to the courtyard there was also a large platform, and that too had a thick cover of coats. This is where people had thrown their coats when they came in and where they yanked them free as they left.

A single bulb on a short wire provided a very pitiful light.

It was terribly hot because of the crowd; in this room too everyone threw off their jackets or sweaters.

Out on the gallery, arriving and departing guests kicked the empty bottles, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident. The bottles made a terrible racket as they rolled or bounced down the stairs until they banged against the wall on the first landing and shattered to pieces.

The entrance door was also being constantly slammed.

He saw all this while falling backward and pulling Klára with him.

He well remembered playing the infantile bottle-kicking game with these strangers. One of whom held him with his arm around his shoulder, while he had his arm around the stranger’s waist, and that is how they held each other up while passing the miserable bottles back and forth to each other with their feet.

Customers of the tailor shop must have stood on the high platform while trying on pencil-thin tailcoats.

While they plopped down on the coats, Klára’s hair became undone and instantly surrounded Kristóf’s face; still, they remained restrained. And the noise of breaking bottles coming from the galleries reminded him that perhaps he should return to the staircase, he couldn’t just leave Pisti there by himself. And no matter how often he looked at the window giving on the courtyard, he always thought, this is how it must have been darkened during the war, during the siege, and it had stayed like this, all the panes daubed with black paint. He did not understand how he could be thinking about something like this when he was so dangerously close to losing his self-control.

Later he probably did not think of anything.

When with some difficulty they stood up to compose themselves, they realized that other people were also lolling about on the coats.

He did not understand how the mind allows itself these parallel connections, it upset him, as if he considered his own way of thinking as dissolute or as if with his compulsive thinking he were questioning his feelings.

Fixing her hair and looking around while readjusting her pins, she saw people slouched on the coats around them behaving in a disgusting, shameless way; let’s get away from here, she whispered, but she was still wearing the mink coat that would be safest on the coat rack next to them.

To get a free hanger they simply took another coat off a hanger and threw it on the platform.

They went looking for a drink, could not find a glass anywhere, did not even see one. But people were more than willing to let them drink from their bottles. They stood in a window recess for a while, holding each other with interlocked knees and thighs; they shared a cigarette while standing like that. They passed the cigarette back and forth, taking the smoke from each other’s mouth. They were insanely careful with the demands of their chests and groins, not to go too far but not to leave each other either, and their bodies readily obeyed both commands.

They also danced, like lunatics, Elvis was singing, their dance turned increasingly vulgar, they deliberately tried to shed their humanity; the pianist in a distant room stopped banging his instrument so as not to compete with Elvis, who was becoming so frenetic that nobody could resist him.

And then they were panting, various odors of perspiration wafting everywhere, Klára looking for her hairpins again, but her extravagant coiffure was gone for good; they went looking for drinks again. But first some water, water; they found it in an empty bathroom, though someone was innocently asleep in the dry tub. At the sink they drank water from each other’s hands. Kristóf was so flushed and overheated that, losing all proportion, he not only slapped water on his own face but, yelping wildly, splashed water into Klára’s open, unprotected face.

Although she liked his buoyant attack, propelled as it was by sheer happiness, she protested hysterically, practically screeching objections.

I’m soaking wet now, my hair.

You’ve ruined my makeup.

How could you do that.

She looked at herself in the mirror, at the water from her face streaking her face powder, running down into her cleavage; she was desperate, and suddenly she looked horrible. Kristóf felt like crying when he saw what he had done.

Forgive me.

No, this can’t be forgiven.

Yes, it can, please forgive me.

After this they had to console themselves with each other’s body and mouth for so long that in the end they could barely extricate themselves from each other. Although in their private darkness thickened by silence, they heard the man in the tub waking up.

They did not spare each other’s tongue or saliva.

Get out, get out of here while I fix my face, but I won’t forgive you.

I’m watching, I want to watch you do it, I won’t get out.

Get out, don’t be a baby, and do it while I’m asking nicely.

I won’t leave you here with this guy.

If he gets fresh, I’ll throw hot water on him.

He waited for her outside the bathroom for at least twenty minutes.

During that time, other people went in and he couldn’t stop them; they’d come out again while he stood there foolishly, a laughingstock, lost in this corridor busy with human needs that had to be satisfied. But it was good to be alone a little; people went into the bathroom and also to the adjacent toilet, he heard everything, and then they came out.

He stood there until he remembered that the bathroom had more than one door.

Klára had disappeared, and the tub was ominously empty, no, that can’t be, he thought, but he did not find her anywhere in the crowd. So she hadn’t forgiven him. That cannot be. But luckily he noticed the man, now in the company of other women, on whose account he had endured hell’s torments for so many long minutes.

And from then on he ceased his maniacal search for her.

He’ll punish her.

Why should he look for her, pant for her like a dog.

Instead, he wound up in the midst of a heated discussion among some people, and it didn’t matter about what. They were arguing about art, he only watched from the sideline or shouted his views; they were all drunk as skunks. Well, is Picasso really a fraud, leading everybody by the nose, or a truly great artist, a fucking great artist who loves to bluff, and you, daddy-o, wouldn’t know how to separate his world-class bluffs from his art.

Then define bluff.

Why should I, let some smartass give a definition.

You can’t even define what it’d be like when I send you back to your mother’s cunt, daddy-o.

In the arts, we can’t get anywhere without definitions.

But you still have to know, daddy-o, where you are inside your mother.

He became mixed up in this argument because he happened to recognize one of the participants as someone he knew from the Emmi Pikler children’s home on Rózsadomb. This boy was a few years older than he, and he recognized him immediately. Both of them were surprised that he was not mistaken. He hailed the other one by his old name. They had taken away this boy’s name too for a time; they had a good laugh about that now. After a while, though, he had to resume his search for Klára because he couldn’t stand being without her. Perhaps Klára had gone on to someplace else. People would sometimes just get up and leave parties like this. He was ready to run out on the street and chase after her. And then he found her, leaning against Simon’s shoulder and talking animatedly to some people. Which caught him unprepared. He was almost ready to turn around and go, to get away from here. The people she was talking to suited her well: a bright-blond, wildly gesticulating, heavily freckled fellow and a peaceful-looking round woman with a large pregnant belly. With his free arm, the boyish fellow was hugging his wife as if holding her up. Simon, addressing some other people, thundering across a quieter conversation, as it were, was explaining in his penetrating hoarse voice that everything was fine, there was no reason for anxiety, nobody should worry about the communist movement. Next week the French will skedaddle out of Algeria like a shot.

But what does that have to do with the communist movement.

Lots, he’d bet his life on it.

That much, eh.

Anybody refusing to leave willingly will be wiped out completely, he said, and took a long swig from the bottle in his hand. And Ágost can say anything he likes, but Hungarians will always be in conflict with the French. Even in the communist movement.

Maybe, but the French won’t even notice.

People were smiling at Simon’s claims, but he continued with his explanations, making himself out as quite invulnerable; he declared that everyone else was mistaken and he was the only one who was predicting events correctly. The people who’d thought they were right tried to rescue what could be rescued, but now there was no way back. Mendès-France was mistaken, Pascal Pia and de Gaulle too;* I’ll tell you how it is, he shouted.

The great mistake of the French is embedded in their religion, Catholicism, that’s how simple it is in history. They wanted to save those filthy little Arabs for the civilized world, you know. Only the generals thought about it clearly,† with iron and blood, how to preserve everything for at least another fifty years.

And he could also have told them they didn’t have that much time.

Life will be more awful for those who want to stay than it’s been for the stubborn British in India.

One doesn’t have to be a prophet to know that the French, with their incredible diplomatic skills, will declare their loss. It’s a matter of days, mark my word. He’s willing to bet that Louis Joxe‡ will make the announcement.

That’s how this whole bloody affair will end, but the real show will only start then.

And while Simon was holding forth in his loud and threatening way, flourishing his wine bottle, in front of him stood Ágost, Kristóf’s melancholic cousin, his arms folded comfortably so he could support his chin in one hand, looking very elegant and aesthetic in one of his well-cut tweed jackets and a cashmere turtleneck sweater, a dandy, with his straight black hair falling over his forehead and brow.

And Kristóf was there too, standing off to the side with his hatred, awkward and wounded, wearing Ágost’s hand-me-downs. Everything he had on had once belonged to Ágost, from the blue underpants to the blue socks, all in perfect condition, even the socks, because his cousin would never wear anything frayed or mended. And he liked blue in all its hues, so Kristóf had a chance to hate all things blue, even though he actually preferred blue to gray or black, to say nothing of brown.

You don’t have to be an oracle to see that now it’s the people’s turn, all oppressed peoples, you just watch, now they’ll be the ones to conquer the colonialists. That’s what the next fifty years will be all about. They’ll take everything back; he’s willing to bet his life on it. Sooner or later the war against the colonial powers and the communist movement will make contact, blend into each other, or just link up geographically, and then God have mercy on everyone because nothing will stand in the way of a world revolution.

The freckled boy stopped gesticulating; he gaped, and let go of his wife.

Everyone seemed deeply and seriously shocked, and they were mute about this drunken world revolution. What could anyone possibly say about such a hope. Kristóf watched them with disgust, just as Ágost kept looking at Simon with a certain revulsion, which was why he hadn’t noticed his cousin. Suddenly Kristóf wanted to turn away, maybe even leave the place. Because no matter how much he couldn’t abide Ágost, he had to admit that the quality of their attention when listening to a third person was very similar.

And if he stayed, he would come to loathe Ágost even more for that, or himself.

Just then Klára motioned to him with her hand raised before her lips.

The freckled boy spoke first; dreamily elongating his words, he said he was shocked.

Simon said that was exactly what he would have expected.

Klára moved a single finger.

But not the way you think, said the blond boy, whose eyelashes were also blond.

Klára’s one finger gesturing at him sufficed to make him endure all this. So that he could sidle away now, so that he wouldn’t have to see them or listen to Simon.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard so much Stalinist baloney.

I’m not going to argue with you, you’re a born Nazi.

Kristóf had no choice; he had to accept that the two of them were not alone and would not be.

The chandeliers had been left behind in these big, vacated rooms, one opening into the other, their ceilings not too high — his great-grandfather would have liked them — but most of the bulbs had either burned out or been removed from the sockets. Kristóf very soberly decided to get down to some serious drinking, even though he had had plenty of booze already. He had to step across bodies sitting or lolling on the bare parquet floor, leaning on or entangled in one another in the most peculiar positions. If he could have had his way, he would have cut them all down, to the last one, with a single saber, while screaming his head off. He discovered some acquaintances among the crowd, some of his college classmates, but he didn’t feel like chatting with them about exams or anything related to his studies. And just when he seemed to have succeeded in getting away unnoticed or half-unnoticed, three giggling, chattering women in another room pulled him down to the floor with them — to make the pretty boy drink their sour-cherry brandy.

And does he know how cherry brandy is made.

How would such a mama’s boy know something like that.

They learned how to make it from their grandmama in Perth Amboy, though they don’t come from there.

But mama’s boy must be from Perth Amboy.

They bared their teeth, they were vampires about to eat mama’s boy from Perth Amboy.

Unless mama’s boy from Perth Amboy was a bonny lad from Leningrad.

They devour every pretty boy they meet.

And they are especially nice to disheartened pretty boys.

He should know he’s dealing with three vampires from Vienna.

Which he will feel immediately.

Give him the damn brandy already.

But they didn’t, not yet, first they had to touch him and grab his arms and thighs, check his flesh. They cooed in his ears and bit him.

Wait, sweet boy.

Bend your little head nicely into Julika’s lap, and I’ll start sucking your blood right away.

But he must close his eyes.

It was cognac, some lousy Albanian cognac that had nothing to do with Grandmama or sour-cherry brandy. But they tickled him while he tried to swallow some. He put up with the tickling so he could drink; he wriggled about, completely lost in their hands and enjoying it immensely. When he swallowed, they reached between his legs, making him snort and swallow the wrong way, scream with joy, writhe and beg for more.

They were common and sweetly innocent. But by morning he did not even remember how and when he had broken free of them or they of him. But he did remember his friend, that he should find his friend.

Completely drunk, he tried to make his way out among the many bodies and again he noticed Klára among them. And he saw that she noticed him too. Goddamn it, she had to see this too. Her radiant face darkened a little, because he too was such a drunken animal, that’s clear now, but what the hell else could he be without her.

But now he too raised his hand before his lips and with a single finger motioned to her.

Klára pretended not to see him; now why in hell did she do that.

That can’t be; no way, this is not happening.

Just then, from behind, exquisitely fine female hands planted themselves on his eyes so he could not see; not to see anything, let there be darkness at least, let his life end now.

But he was so insane, so drunk, that in his agony he could think of nothing but Klára, only her. No one else. He could not imagine these were not her hands. No one else had such fine small hands.

Who is this woman, shouted the woman in the darkness, I am jealous of her.

Her fine fingers vibrated on his face; long fingernails dug gently into his flesh, into his lips, it hurt, which felt inexpressibly good, she could have tortured him more with those sharp nails.

Of course it wasn’t her but that stupid Gyöngyvér, who must have noticed what he’d been doing.

But this also meant that the old fascist was still alive, otherwise it wouldn’t have occurred to them to come to this place. And that brought them too close to each other, closer than they had ever been before. Not even when in the adjacent room Gyöngyvér was squealing for his benefit. They were both drunk too, but there was another reason: they both felt abandoned in every sense of the word. They grabbed each other’s hands, and dumb Gyöngyvér shouted into his ear, right in front of everyone, who is this woman, because she looks like a high-class lady and she won’t put up with high-class ladies in Kristóf’s company.

He told her he had to go because a friend was waiting for him outside, in the corridor, his best friend.

But he’ll be right back.

He should answer her question first, does he need these women, and he shouldn’t go anywhere, because she wants to tell him right away what’s happened.

She can tell him when he comes back.

No, she wants to tell him right now.

And not only did she not let go of his hands, holding them down between them, but with her groin she pushed against his genitals. With her pubic bone, she clung demandingly to Kristóf’s loins, and while they supported each other like this, they could do nothing else; she breathed her stupid words softly and slowly onto his face.

Luckily she was no longer screeching so loudly that Klára could hear her.

Somehow Kristóf let himself go; against his will he let himself be carried away by the tension that the ideal position of their loins had created for them.

Kristóf won’t believe this, but less than half an hour ago this lousy Ágost proposed marriage to her. That anybody could be so disgraceful. She had been drinking ever since, like a fish, but she wasn’t so drunk that she believed a single word of it.

He could feel on his back that Klára saw him yet he couldn’t get rid of Gyöngyvér. And then everything would be over. His drunken agony increased so much that he wanted to scream. And now he didn’t want to lose Gyöngyvér either. He wasn’t actually listening to what stupid Gyöngyvér was saying. The truth was, he felt an appetite for her loins, that was the honest truth. He had observed her before and felt that when he had, watching mostly her cunt, he was not mistaken. The way she ran all over the apartment in her short slip. Not to mention her squeals from the other room. So that he couldn’t sleep. Why not let her cunt scream a little for him. He wanted it to scream for him, he wanted her breath, and her long fingernails. These truly awful red nails with which she was digging into his clenched fists.

She laughed silently, her head thrust back dramatically.

But she’d rejected the proposal, that was the limit. That somebody should be such a louse. She chased him away, out of my sight, you animal, scram, back into the belly of your mother who spoiled you rotten. She did not say all this to him but she had chased him away. He’d missed the boat, he was too late. This Ágost thinks he can just do anything he feels like doing. For weeks he’d been torturing her. Now she’s completely drunk, but she wants to tell Kristóf quite soberly what she’s not yet told Ágost.

Go ahead then, tell me.

If he can hold his mouth, while he’s so drunk.

Why couldn’t he.

He should swear to it.

No, he won’t swear to it.

As they breathed these words into each other’s mouth along with the odor of alcohol and tobacco, and were simultaneously feeling that everything was in its best possible position even though they hadn’t wanted it but simply found it, Kristóf thought, the hell with Klára, let her go, who cares.

In two days, no more, she’s moving out. This she hasn’t told even that idiot Ágost. Now she should marry him, now, when she can’t even stay in the same room with him. But she will tell him this only at the last minute. Kristóf can’t imagine the things this pig has done to her, this monster. One day, she’ll tell Kristóf all about it. She is moving out. Today she’ll tell him, while they’re here, she’s just waiting for the right moment, when it would hurt him.

Once in his life something should hurt him.

As early as tonight, she will sleep in the maid’s room, together with Ilona.

How could she do that.

Ilona would sleep with her child and Gyöngyvér would sleep where the child usually sleeps, they had already arranged it. She is not a cruel or vengeful person, but Ágost had so debauched her that he now deserves the pain; he should hurt, feel the pain.

But where is she moving to.

She doesn’t know yet.

He was sure she did.

Kristóf did not understand himself, which at this moment meant that he did not understand Creation either; how could this be happening to him.

He would have liked to disappear in his shame, but he could not stop anything. With great zeal and vulgarity they thrust themselves against each other. They made contact on the suitable points of elevation for them to seem most promising to each other, while talking about something else.

Actually, what he really felt was contempt for this stupid broad who, head thrown back, was laughing as vindictively as an infuriated provincial prima donna. The contempt added something to his cheap thrill. He could not wholly deny it to himself.

He was toying with the thought that at the right moment he’d turn around, reject his contempt for her, and make a move for his own sake.

But not yet.

He won’t reject her yet but instead will continue to enjoy her a little longer.

He turned around, though, to see whether Klára could actually see him.

Kristóf shouldn’t be so cruel to her, should stop talking so harshly. And now he should tell her who the dame was he’d fallen for so hard.

Hearing this, Kristóf realized he must have convinced only himself that he had felt Klára’s eyes on his back.

Or Klára might have disappeared.

First Gyöngyvér should tell him who her next victim was.

It’s still a secret, laughed Gyöngyvér, the future will tell; and she became beautiful, as the chosen person seemed to appear in the mirror of her face.

She really wants to leave Ágost.

Or they’re just having fun with each other.

She had already drunk a toast to it, to this great decision, champagne, with her best girlfriends, so she could forget this whole fucking past year and everything about it.

It wasn’t even a year.

Forget it then; she already has, who gives a shit. Why don’t they go over to the next room and dance a little. She really feels like dancing because she wants to forget everything.

No, he won’t go with her.

But this is the most cheerful day of her life, so Kristóf shouldn’t be fucking around with her.

He’d still like to find his friend because, Gyöngyvér won’t believe this, his friend is sitting and crying all by himself on the stairs.

He managed to retrieve a hand from under Gyöngyvér’s fingernails, but then she grabbed his thighs, and he didn’t want to leave her splendid loins so fast, her cunt.

That’s all he could think of, though he wanted to leave.

Gyöngyvér should quickly tell him, before he had to go, what happened to the old man.

Nothing; what should have happened.

He tensed his thighs, to show a bit of protest, but he enjoyed the new situation even more. Giggling, Gyöngyvér was shrugging her shoulders.

She doesn’t care about Uncle István’s idiocy either; the old man’s now home free.

You can’t be serious.

She and Nínó had already designed Nínó’s mourning dress, in the taxicab, but nada, it was a false alarm. They were hoping he’d kicked the bucket at last. But they even had a conversation with him. His hand had to be guided a little, but he did sign the contract. The old fart wouldn’t give in easily.

You people can now sell his house, but even you can’t succeed in everything.

They had gone to eat and drink something in the Serbian restaurant, sitting there until late afternoon, planning to go back to the hospital but, Kristóf won’t believe this, Nínó got a little tipsy, smoked, and was very candid.

The two of them are best friends now. But if she stayed, if she took her seriously, if she were not to move out, Nínó would just humiliate her again. She’s willing to humiliate her in front of anyone. She does it even in front of Ilona. This whole thing has happened because of her. And then Ágost sent André to bug her, to convince her to stay. But she won’t. All she had to say to André was, listen, André, I will never be the wife of Ágost Lippay Lehr, do you understand, never.

If you like him so much, I said to André, why don’t you marry him.

Your leaving him will kill him.

Kristóf should imagine that André, that hairy monkey, had the nerve to tell her that she would kill Ágost. Go back to him then and tell him to go ahead, he can hang himself. But it’s best they don’t talk about this now, and Kristóf should shake a leg, it’s time to dance a little.

They took off together, but then, luckily, they lost each other. Perhaps they let go of each other while dancing. He didn’t mind this, he did not mind anything, he drank and wanted to leave at last because there was no point in hanging around without Klára.

Everything became boring and disgusting.

He felt, no, he knew he was lost without Klára, but he was so drunk that he couldn’t feel sorry for himself about this. And he had found out everything from Gyöngyvér; that was his great satisfaction for the evening. At least he wouldn’t have to see this dizzy dame at the dining table anymore. He managed to get out to the staircase, but he didn’t find that fucking Pisti.

At least other people let him drink; they kept bringing the booze in corked bottles from Városház Street, where the inn was open.

It was good kövidinka, cheap white wine.

Or he went over to the bar of the Gourmand with some other people so they wouldn’t have to drink that crappy kövidinka, let whoever had a taste for it drink it.

That is how he wound up in the middle of the street, asphalt below, sky above, and the stupid tree branches in between.

Then unexpectedly he found Pisti, just as they were coming back to the apartment from somewhere. With his head buried in coats, Pisti was asleep on that fucking platform. If only he didn’t have to look at this fucking platform. And then he lay down next to his friend, so he’d be in a good place too. When he awoke, his friend was looking at him but Kristóf did not know who the person was who was looking at him as a friend. But then who was his friend. And then they had a fairly intelligible conversation, they held on to each other and quietly talked about how it was with the girls in Wiesenbad, reminded each other of the time they had walked over to Wiesa or Annaberg, and does Kristóf remember that old dame, that nurse, Sister Klára or somebody.

To whose place they walked over one Saturday afternoon.

Because Sister Klára had invited them.

They slept at her place.

They woke early in the morning to the sound of church bells.

She was a nice woman, that Sister Klára, that’s for sure.

She gave them hot chocolate for breakfast.

She liked Hungarians because her son lived in Budapest.

Kristóf understood, through the drunken haze, that something had happened to Pisti that he didn’t want to talk about; instead, he kept talking of other things.

Yet no matter how drunk he was, Kristóf wanted to know what had happened.

One day he’ll tell him.

He had always wanted to tell Kristóf, not anybody else.

But he won’t now because he couldn’t bear it.

Kristóf knew this was no joke.

They held on to each other even more tightly, almost hugging.

They remained silent.

In this harsh silence, in which Kristóf sobered up a little, he asked his friend if he had been beaten up.

No, he had not been.

Still, he should tell him now what happened.

His friends, his best friends, had ruined him.

Kristóf of course wanted to know what friends.

He can’t tell him, he won’t tell him, but one day he will.

No you won’t.

But what kind of friends.

It doesn’t matter, damn it.

Why doesn’t it.

Why should anything matter; Kristóf wouldn’t understand anyway. Doesn’t understand a thing about why people are the way they are; my prick understands more.

Then it must have been those friends he had told him about on the train.

You’d better stop asking. Can it already, will you.

What’s important for me is to know that you’re sure I couldn’t have been the one.

Please, leave me alone right now; it’s not worth it.

What’s not worth it.

Nothing in this world is interesting enough to bother about, that’s what’s not worth it, but I never thought you ever did anything against me. Fuck it, man, you’re too little a boy for that.

So you want me to get the hell out of here, leave you alone.

Yes.

That is where he saw Pisti last, in his unbuttoned white shirt, among the coats, but he shouldn’t have gotten up and left him. And all the time he wanted to tell him, very openly and simply, that he loved him. To be precise, additional long years had to pass before unexpectedly they met again.

Then he learned many things he had failed to learn that night or at any time before.

They were well into the night when a grave silence enveloped the crowd.

The person at the piano kept banging away but then he too noticed that the silence around him had deepened. He could no longer pulverize it with felt hammers on wires. This person was a poet who happened to play the piano well, a rather soft-spoken poet who barely six years later, not too far from here, on a night very similar to this one, simply walked out the window of a sixth-floor studio apartment. In secret, he loved the wife of his best friend and had lured her away from him. Perhaps he was even more hopelessly in love with his best friend. If properly provided with drinks, which meant that his friends had to dish out his drinks in small dozes but continuously, and mainly choice whiskey, champagne, white Cuban rum, and the like, the poet could spend an entire night lost in his own thoughts and playing the piano without using any scores.

Then there was some whispering and movement in the rooms. The last pedaled sounds of the piano had not quite settled in the air when a loud male voice could be heard from the outside.

Echoing shouts from the staircase.

From which it was clear that the police were here and the gathering would be brutally dispersed.

Kristóf recognized the second voice, also loud, that followed the first, the second one speaking over the first; he could recognize Simon’s voice even from the depth of the innermost room.

Where he stopped, frozen in place.

No one moved; instead they listened, sunk into themselves or with their heads thrown back, knowing what they had to prepare for.

Where to escape.

Kristóf could not have known any more than this because only a few moments earlier he had fled from the bathroom.

Where for a while, no matter how drunk they were, he and Gyöngyvér very seriously and with the greatest devotion wanted to understand each other’s bodily intentions. But they failed abysmally, could not find what they were looking for. Soon they were only grappling, their half-naked limbs awkwardly entangled, because what was happening between them, who wanted what or what was not wanted and by whom, was barely comprehensible.

He literally had to tear himself away from her because he did not understand how he could have demeaned himself so much; how he could have done such a thing; what had his body still wanted from him when Gyöngyvér began to scream, don’t fuck me, please, I beg you, don’t fuck me, even though a moment earlier she had wanted it, and then she shoved him away unexpectedly.

He didn’t want it either.

Then how could she say such a thing.

Or maybe he did.

Then why not, after all.

Simon, in the outer room, with the ominous reassurance of the aggressive drunk, was demanding that the commander of these plainclothesmen and uniformed policemen be brought to him.

It also became clear that plainclothesmen had been mingling with the partying crowd for some time.

He did this just in time, and a good thing too, because the police were about to begin beating up people and chasing them out of the apartment.

Klára did not see what was happening but she heard it.

Two men grabbed Simon by his arms, one on each side, and a third one was poised to bring his nightstick down on Simon’s head when André Rott came rushing to his aid.

He whispered something into the ear of one of the policemen, who immediately lost confidence and stopped yelling. People around them heard only the word comrade and then once more comrade. The policeman with the nightstick let go of Simon’s arm. Although he didn’t want to; for him it would have been nice to see the well-aimed blow hit its target and to complete the cry of victory already on his lips. And the other two policemen quickly followed his example.

The nightstick-wielding policeman may have been the assigned leader of this operation, but the two others must also have heard what André said. They looked at each other as if they had made a big mistake. Everyone could see they were uncouth country policemen ordered up to the capital only on big holidays.

Now the two of them, Simon and André, very politely took hold of the policeman with the nightstick, one on each arm, very courteously, and, to the amazement of the crowd, steered him out of the apartment to talk about the necessary details in the stairwell.

Since all three policemen were strapping, strong men, the occurrence made visible the carefully disguised true hierarchy of force.

People made way for them willingly.

The plainclothesmen, however, stayed awkwardly within the apartment.

There, tension ran so high that the only reason people did not faint by the dozen was that the tension itself kept them afloat on the surface of their dread. And it couldn’t be released even if one knew the answers to harsh questions like who belongs to which side, who is with whom here or against whom. Maybe there were some murmurs in the innermost rooms, but they soon subsided because people could hear snatches of a loud altercation in the corridor.

Not even the people in the outer rooms could make out the words, but they felt their strength, their suppressed and infectious bluntness. Crisscrossing shouts quickly rose to a fever pitch. Received by deadly silence both inside the apartment and out. Then footsteps, shuffling, as though people might be fighting, after all, rumbling on the stairs. But nothing like this was happening. It may have been a projection of desperate imaginations.

André and Simon came back, furious, explaining the situation to each other, and in a little while the plainclothesmen left.

A few of them probably stayed.

These two continued to unload their words on each other in the midst of the drunken crowd as if this were the most natural thing in the world. They were evidently not satisfied with having saved the evening. They wanted to drink some more right away because they had to sober up from the excitement they had just experienced.

To which the others could hardly contribute since from the start they had been excluded from the company of these two.

The silence dissolved very slowly.

At best people could let them drink from their own bottles, the two heroes.

But some people just waited for a chance to leave as soon as they could.

This time they managed to squeak by.

In a little while one could hear more careful openings and closings of doors; nobody was slamming them. People left separately, anything but going together, each person alone, singly, cautiously, properly.

Those who stayed gathered strength to bear up decently, that’s what they told themselves, decently, though decency had nothing to do with it.

First they turned on the tape recorder; the poet stayed at the piano, his hands in his lap, but for a long time Elvis failed to make anyone move.

As if no one could return to the former lightheartedness in front of the others. There was also a feeling of shame that the earlier lightheartedness had been nothing but an illusion of guilelessness.

Not much time went by.

Kristóf was struggling with his own little misery; everything would be miserable, whether he stayed or left. Then suddenly he heard Klára screaming from somewhere. It couldn’t be anything else. All he had to do was reach the wide-open door. Could he be mistaken. Many people were there, standing or sitting on the floor, and he was not alone with his fear, for the distressed screams made others move too, or at least get up.

In the middle of the next room the crowd instantly thinned out.

Klára was there by herself; some people fled while others wanted to rush to help her or stood paralyzed; Kristóf did not immediately manage to break through the human ring made helpless by this double tension.

They all saw what was happening, a single look sufficed. But the improbability of the occurrence frightened some of them away and paralyzed others. It was not fear, indifference, or curiosity that worked so powerfully but modesty. Perhaps they shouldn’t see what they were seeing.

Empathy and willingness to help need time to overcome modesty.

Earlier, Klára had been among those who, defying the communal helplessness, had begun to dance. She was a rebel, after all. That’s how we’ll respond, we’ll dance. Finally she took her faith into her own hands. Now let’s dance and leave no stone standing.

Yes, Almighty, let’s see what the two of us can do together.

She was standing in the middle of the room as if frozen while waiting for a partner before taking her next dance step.

With her legs apart in the middle of the parquet floor inside the human ring and no longer screaming. As if she were listening intensely to something, to an inner voice. Her lips had parted and remained parted, her huge eyes opened wide onto the silent universe. Not only was blood dripping down her stockinged thighs — she must have started screaming when she noticed it — but in the next two pulsing thrusts, in front of everyone, blood clots came pouring out of her. Perhaps they could hear the clots plashing down, perhaps the sound could have been heard, but no one who heard it wanted to hear it.

Elvis continued to wail his melody to himself and then someone unplugged him.

Someone handed a kind of black wrap to Simon, who was moaning, moaning to keep himself from howling. He had elbowed his way to her from another room. What somebody handed to him was one of those big, soft, warm knitted shawls that peasant women put on their shoulders when going to church on cold Sunday mornings.

Still moaning, he quickly bundled her in it, covered her mute body, spoke to her, and held her so others could not see her face, she should not be defenseless, telling her she would be all right, he was already taking her, but how should he take her, he asked himself out loud.

As someone who usually does not deal in blood or loss of blood.

I’m a physician, someone said.

We’ll call an ambulance, shouted someone else.

Hold on, my sweet, if you can, hold on to my neck, my darling, and there won’t be any trouble, I will lift you up, I’ll carry you, where is your bag, where is the car key.

By then Kristóf was standing there too.

Go find her coat. Don’t call an ambulance, he shouted.

Several people followed them to help, the physician among them, he was the one who opened the door, and people in the stairway supported Simon’s arms, following him with physical contact, women and men ready to cushion his fall should he trip with his burden. But there was no need for help because he was taking her quickly and securely, as if carrying no weight at all.

In his nervousness Kristóf could not find it. Because he forgot he was looking not for a regular coat but a mink coat, he should be looking for the mink. And that was really his only task. Yet he could not find it, though he remembered where to look. Klára might catch cold because of his fecklessness. He shoved all the coats off the racks, but could not find the mink coat. Not on a hanger, not anywhere. Of course he found his own coat with no trouble, it just came to his hand, and he shoved it aside. Rummaging among the coats on the platform, he called to one of the vampire girls; she probably wasn’t from Vienna and she was now fearfully following his every movement; he told her what to look for. A long mink coat, that’s what she should look for.

While they were throwing coats about and people watched them in alarm, there passed a small segment of his life in which he was not certain he was a person. Or maybe he was a person who imagined himself in a situation like this, and then he would have to find a truly existing object in the realm of imagination.

The girl who loved to laugh was helping him, she too kept throwing coats in all directions, but they didn’t have much time.

As if he had lost his mind, he kept shouting to everyone, asking where else were there coats in the apartment and that everyone should look for it.

Let me get by.

The frightened and somewhat reduced crowd let him by, naturally, and tried to help, but he must have changed his mind because then he ran after Simon and Klára. Klára had been put in the backseat, bundled in the large shawl; her hair shone in the darkness.

Kristóf fell against the car, which was surrounded by people, and told Simon, who had been waiting for him, that he could not find it, couldn’t.

Then we’re leaving, Simon shouted, and you’ll find the coat.

The next day, when startled to wakefulness by his nausea, he realized he hadn’t found the coat.

He was still drunk and there was still no mink coat.

Or he’d gone mad and then, luckily, was only imagining this entire shocking idiocy. Even so, he should get dressed to look for Andria Lüttwitz’s mink coat and look for Klára.

Actually, from the first moment of wakefulness he could not shake the thought that Pisti had stolen the coat.

Not because he had no coat, he probably did. And if a man with no coat steals, he wouldn’t steal a woman’s mink coat.

Pisti did this to him, but not because of the money.

He found Ágost’s room empty.

The bed was untouched, left the way Ilona nicely turns it down every night, folding the quilt back.

He knew where to find money.

He had done this on other occasions, did not even call it stealing but rather a satisfying revenge, and he was indeed content with this amount of revenge. He took back what was his due. These two, his aunt and Ágost, had systematically stolen his inheritance. He, on the other hand, had only helped himself to petty amounts until now. Now, however, he had not a penny to his name.

He had to leave.

Logically he should have called them at home; at least he should have tried. But this occurred to him only when he was already on Teréz Boulevard. In the meantime the storm had passed, everything seemed back to normal, and the sun was even out, as though for two days nothing had happened in the city.

Superintendents had already cleared away from the sidewalks the traces of damage caused by the storm, but the streets were still strewn with debris.

He found their telephone number under Klára’s name in the phone book, but no matter how many times he tried, and he spent a long time in the stinking telephone booth, no one answered. So he’d go to every hospital and clinic. He went first to the gynecological clinic on Üllői Road, but no patient by that name had been brought in during the night. They looked carefully in their register, very carefully. They suggested he try the clinic on Baross Street. She was not there either. They sent him from there to Bakáts Square. This was not close, but he walked, he knew the way. This turned out to be an error: it was not a hospital but strictly an obstetrics clinic, and even in emergencies they were reluctant to deal with abortions.

It was late afternoon by the time he arrived at this cheerful, pleasantly fragrant place.

Please believe it.

He does, but has no idea what to do next.

The female porter wanted to help him because theoretically it was very simple. There was no need for him to traipse around half the city.

She asked if he was a relative.

He said no.

Then she couldn’t help.

He asked her to, please.

The woman gave him a long and sympathetic look. She was interrupted by some inquiries, she had to make a phone call, she had to go out to the entrance to arrange something; these interruptions gave her a chance to think about the matter. When she returned and found him still waiting, without another word she called the central hospital bed registry. They told her that the previous night no patient by that name had been brought to any of the city’s hospitals or clinics.

But that’s not possible.

Calm down. Accept it.

He stayed for a while longer because he could not compose himself well enough to leave.

And then he asked this woman where, despite everything, he might keep looking.

Very cautiously, the woman asked him to tell her what had happened, was it a spontaneous abortion.

Yes, a spontaneous abortion.

And where was she taken from.

He told her, and while he spoke he saw on her face that this woman knew everything about them, she’s simply reading all of it off him, and that’s how people read other people, off each other’s face.

Was she taken in an ambulance.

No.

Then it’s harder, because she can’t ask the ambulance services, but she took a frayed notebook out of her desk drawer. She named all the places where he might still look. Kristóf went to the Rókus Hospital, and when he did not find her there either, he walked the streets aimlessly for a while, among people. He was walking into another person’s life; whether or not he finds her, from now on this will be his life. This new life of his has nothing to do with any of his former lives, with his birth or with his family or with anything. They had all become like strange objects. Because he would not venture outside his new life, not even with a single thought. Which was neither good nor bad, but after so much walking and absorbing so much of the streetscape, his legs began to grow tired.

He called again from a phone booth stinking of male urine, the phone rang, he held on for a long time, nobody answered.

He did not find her in the hospital on Szövetség Street either, and by now it was evening. From there, he should have gone to the hospital on Sándor Péterfy Street; he stood on Rákóczi Road, staring longingly at a slow-moving illuminated streetcar, thinking he could take it to the hospital. He could not give up the search yet he did not continue. He didn’t want to ruin his last chance of the evening by not finding her on Péterfy Street.

When he returned to the apartment on Teréz Boulevard, at first he thought that for some reason everyone had left the place and every object was frozen in place along with his family’s life.

He went to look for something to eat and found his entire family sitting silently around the large dining table under the baroque chandelier. They all looked at him as if they had just been talking about him. Their eyes were filled with reproach. They must have finished eating earlier, and it seemed unusual that Ilona had not cleared the table. Nínó sat at the head of the table, under the 1848 battle scene, Ágost on her right, with Gyöngyvér facing him. Beautiful Irén was also there with her grown daughters, Lilla and Viola, and at her side the little Bellardi boy, the most favored pupil; facing him glowed Irén’s utterly bald husband, and next to him were the relatives from Transylvania, Ildikó and Mária Lehr.

Even if Ilona had not been standing by the door, her eyes red and tear-stained, he would have known what had happened.

But Kristóf said nothing, not even hello, took his place at the empty chair at the far end of the table, opposite Nínó; he looked at each of them separately, these faces that, yes, were familiar from somewhere, poured himself some water and drank it.

When he put his empty glass back on the table, Nínó spoke.

I am not certain this interests you, Kristóf, she said sternly and solemnly, but at twenty minutes after three o’clock this afternoon your uncle István died in my arms.

Kristóf could not help thinking that Nínó should have left her arms out of it, along with the sentimental hogwash.

But she could leave out nothing, her lips trembled, she sobbed with pain because the pain was real, which immediately made Gyöngyvér cry too. Just then the phone rang in the living room — luckily, because Nínó’s stern solemnity affected him quite strongly, the sentimental hogwash with which she doused her listeners. It was possible that Nínó’s ridiculous behavior would have a stronger influence on him than the death of his uncle. But the ringing telephone was too distant a sound in the apartment for anyone to answer at this tense moment. While Nínó is rendering her account of the great man’s death and perhaps announcing Kristóf’s disinheritance.

They were all waiting for this great event.

You have probably only come for supper, Nínó continued at the head of the table, but we are mourning, if this doesn’t bother you while you sup.

The event was too recent for anyone to be wearing black yet.

Yes, Kristóf replied, and began spooning the soup put before him.

He was truly hungry.

In grave silence they watched him.

He asked Ilona for seconds.

Accompanied by their reproof, he ate a second portion of soup quickly.

Nínó had not been mistaken, after all, her insight into human nature stood on a firm basis.

It was a quite superb cream of mushroom soup, and while spooning it, Kristóf glanced at the little Bellardi boy, this most favored pupil, who in return was watching him rather slyly.

It was clear that this was the character with whom Gyöngyvér would move in.

Then it was Irén’s turn, and the others willingly followed suit; they all spoke quietly and politely of the great dead man.

But in fact, they were all waiting for the great moment.

Nínó kept very quiet, however, no longer feeling any pain.

And when the telephone rang again, Ágost went to answer it and in the name of the grieving family to accept the prompt condolences, whoever might be at the other end of the line. They knew this was to be expected, the phone would keep on ringing because the news had been announced on the radio. The others around the table sank back into reproachful silence, which is to say they pretended they had urgent remembering to do. Of course their silence was directed not only at Kristóf, heartless and ungrateful boy, but at death too, death which treats everyone so unfairly.

But how can anyone be so heartless.

And frankly, Nínó was at this moment rather curious to know who might be calling, because she had not yet heard from the prime minister, though he had informed them via his secretary that he would call personally.

Ágost stayed away for a long time.

The reproving silence did not touch Kristóf; he simply acknowledged it. Ilona cleared away his soup plate but then hesitated between taking the main dish from the platter on the table or serving Kristóf something hot from the kitchen. And nobody else handed him the platter on which lay, in the light of the baroque chandelier, the remnants of masterfully sliced stuffed beef, rare but crusty on the outside, surrounded by evenly cut potatoes sprinkled with parsley.

Ilona could slice any meat without the stuffing spilling out.

And when nothing happened, he stood up irreverently and pulled the platter toward his end of the table. He could have asked Viola for it, with half a smile. It was not enough that he was so heartless and now behaved so disrespectfully, but he also served himself while still standing up, helping himself to meat and potatoes much too generously. With his eyes he searched the table for the pickled vegetables. To go with this meat, according to custom, either pickled melon or pickled peppers stuffed with red cabbage should be served.

Nínó spoke again under the painting of the battle scene.

While you are looking for your cabbaged pepper, if you are at all interested in this information, the Hungarian Academy of Science is being draped in black in honor of your uncle.

She said this in a voice indicating that she needed all her mental strength to control herself, and she would control herself, for her mental strength was enormous; she was unable to say out loud that she wished never again to see her murdered kid brother’s son at her table. Even though this is what the others expected of her. That he should move out immediately. Growing somewhat hesitant, Kristóf sat back down. His hesitancy was due mainly to the conspicuous absence of cabbaged peppers, since eating this sort of meat usually began with a few bites of cabbaged peppers. No matter what his aunt might think of him, she too was capable of stuffing herself with things straight out of the jar. All right, so he started with the meat; it was fattier than it should have been, but it had been well cooked and had a good crunchy texture; he was stuffing himself, to get the meat inside himself as fast as he could and then do the same with the potatoes. But he had hardly put away a few mouthfuls, and the stuffing was as tasty as usual, when, thinking of his barely dead uncle, it occurred to him that he should have gone first to Buda.

Given Simon’s place of work, perhaps Klára had been taken to Kútvölgyi Hospital in Buda; how could he be so stupid as not to have thought of that. That’s where he should be looking. Involuntarily he swallowed the food in his mouth, wiped his lips, please excuse me, all of you, he said softly and properly, and then, to the others’ great amazement, he stood up from the table, nodded politely, almost amiably, and walked out.

That was the moment when Ilona would have brought him the pickled melon or the pickled pepper stuffed with red cabbage.

He crossed the empty rooms and picked up his coat; they could hear the front door close behind him.

They did not understand how Nínó could stand for this.

He took the steps down by threes; his great-grandfather also had not liked his steps too steep.

At Kútvölgyi Hospital, the porter refused to give him any information. He should come back tomorrow morning. Until then no one would tell him anything. It probably would help to get up to the ward and ask the nurse on night duty but the porter refused to allow that; he tried to give him some money, how dare you, shouted the porter.

The lobby was empty. For a while, he pondered which way to go, how to get around the burly man, but the porter was watching him no less attentively. He made one little move, and the man shoved him between the wings of the revolving door and then out to the street.

Shit on him, he’d look for the service entrance. He had to go around the building, climb across a fence, and then there were two such entrances, both closed with heavy metal doors.

Through one of these entrances he could get to the sixth floor.

This is where his dead uncle was too, somewhere inside this enormous building with its lit-up windows. But by then the old fascist had been taken down to the basement to be prepared for transportation. Kristóf stayed for a long time, leaning against the flue of the wheezing, puffing ventilating system; he tried to follow his uncle on his way.

But he did not find Klára on the gynecology ward in this hospital when he returned early the next morning.

In the meantime the sky became overcast again and March turned very wintry.

He got on the bus in front of the hospital and decided that no matter what, he would ring Andria Lüttwitz’s bell, she must know what had happened.

He did ring the bell, but he said not a word about the mink coat. They stood in the hallway where nothing had changed in the past decade and Andria Lüttwitz leaned on the same silver-handled cane. Klára was in the hospital on Üllői Road, after all, and it’s a good thing Kristóf showed up because, on top of everything else, Simon must go out of town early tomorrow morning. She can’t find Klára’s mother because she must have gone to Nagymaros. Kristóf went back to Üllői Road. Where everything started all over again. They did not let him in. He should come back tomorrow during visiting hours. The rear entrance was carefully guarded; a slovenly guard was stacking dishes full of leftovers. Kristóf took the streetcar to Újvilág Street, where perhaps somebody had found the mink coat in the meantime.

The house was wrapped in grave silence.

He rang the bell for a long time before a young man, about his own age, whom he must have interrupted in some engrossing activity, came to the door. Very reluctantly, he said he knew about the matter but nobody had found a mink coat.

Kristóf still wanted to come in.

The young man would not let him.

The next day, during visiting hours, he found a very pale and terribly weak Klára, a Klára whom he did not know but loved more insanely than ever, loved with bated breath. For a while, he sat politely on a chair by her bed, and then they held each other’s hands and stayed that way. Klára closed her eyes as if to doze off; he watched the wonderful vaulting of her eyelids, and when she started up from her sleep, they leaned against each other and cried, moaned, whimpered, and sniveled in the big ward, where seven other women lay in their beds in conditions similar to Klára’s. These women also had visitors, but Kristóf and Klára were so far away from them and everything was so stark, bare, and bleak that they did not reach them with their voices, pain, or looks.

He came at a good time, because she was going to be left alone for a while, she didn’t know for how long.

They could weep freely, nobody heard them, and if they did nobody cared. They were not very loud, anyway; they showed remarkable discipline with their pain.

Simon’s travels are strictly confidential, now he has gone to Brussels and Paris, but Kristóf must not know this.

From that moment on he took care of her. He came to visit her several times a day, bringing fruit, flowers, compote in a small bowl and delicious chicken soup from Andria; he took and washed her laundry so Klára would have a clean nightshirt every day; she had to change her underpants frequently too.

She washes and rinses them in the sink.

No.

When she had to get out of bed, she could hardly stand up. She couldn’t walk out into the corridor without holding on to something.

He found a way to get into the hospital outside visiting hours.

Klára waited for him.

It was a quiet happiness, but they were very happy with each other and because of each other.

And he did not say a word about the disappearance of Andria’s coat. He had a strategic plan about it.

Because of the mourning and the preparations for the funeral, the apartment on Teréz Boulevard was constantly filled with dissembling people. It was not simple to carry out his plan. One sunny morning the prime minister showed up with his secretary, Karakas, but luckily Kristóf happened not to be home. These dissembling people repelled him, they seemed to be light-years from the quiet, painful happiness he was sharing with Klára, and, since she had given him a key to take or return things she needed, he preferred to stay in Simon and Klára’s apartment in Dembinszky Street, sleep in their bed. When he had to go home for clean underwear, some clothes, or his notebooks — because he did go over to Buda to look in on some lectures at the teachers’ college — Ilona told him what had been happening or what could be expected to happen and when. Gyöngyvér will not move out after all, oh no, now everything has changed; they will be getting married just as soon as possible. They will do it in the greatest possible secrecy, avoiding all formalities, not to crush Nínó completely.

They will go on their honeymoon right after the funeral, which is something she, Ilona, doesn’t understand, what’s their hurry, she doesn’t understand that either. But something has really changed between them; all day long they bill and coo, behave as if nobody had died in the house.

They’ll simply go over to the district council office, Hansi and André will be the witnesses, then they’ll go out to eat somewhere; not only is she, Ilona, forbidden to cook anything, but she’s not even to know about this.

She begs Kristóf too not to know anything.

One doesn’t do something like this to one’s dead father or mourning mother, she doesn’t understand it.

She does not understand them, simply does not.

Andria Lüttwitz picked her words carefully when he dropped in on her. It’s clear that Klára will have to stay in the hospital for at least ten days. Such a tremendous loss of blood.

When they bring her home, though, Andria would like to see her mink coat again. Kristóf shouldn’t misunderstand her, not because she needs it, she no longer goes around in such coats, no rush either, there’s no need to hurry, Kristóf shouldn’t trouble himself too much.

The elderly woman’s shyness was touching, and Kristóf was furious that Pisti had done this to him and to Andria.

Andria waited anxiously for Kristóf’s response and, looking for his goodwill, added, when I die it’ll be hers, anyway, because I’ll leave everything to her.

Even if he knew where to look for Pisti, he didn’t have the courage to squeal on him.

No matter how weak Klára still was, Kristóf had to tell her about it.

The coat had not reached her consciousness or she did not care, which made Kristóf’s situation easier. Klára fell asleep, Klára woke up, Kristóf fed her, gave her something to drink, holding her by the elbow, he took her to the toilet; he was on good terms with the nurses, who were curious to know who this handsome young man was, who was not her husband, who had so suddenly disappeared.

First he went to see his uncle in the apartment on Damjanich Street, where he had not been for years. To find out whether it was possible to purchase a mink coat in Budapest, preferably a full-length one, new or used, any kind.

The real question was how much would one spend for it.

Kristóf was very interested in this question.

It would depend, of course, on the quality of the animal, and for whom the coat was to be made, if I am not offending you with my questions.

Actually, Kristóf enjoyed talking about this as dispassionately as if they were real merchants. He did not yet want to say more to his uncle. He wanted to figure out whether his plan could work. This is where he learned from Irén that he had to move out of the Teréz Boulevard apartment because he had irrevocably offended Nínó. He didn’t care; how could he have offended her. And he did not even believe it, because he knew Nínó better. Then he looked up in the telephone book whether that certain photographer, István Stefanek, still existed on Köztársaság Square.

He had to do it before the front gates were locked, so that neither Balter nor old Mr. Pálóczky, helpless since his wife’s death, would see him. He figured he’d do it on the eve of the funeral. The body was indeed lying in state in the lobby of the academy, on a splendid catafalque surrounded by huge clusters of floor standards, and the next day it would be taken from there to be buried.

The widow with her son and brand-new daughter-in-law had not yet come home from their audience with the president of the academy.

He chatted for a while with Ilona, and when he was left to himself in the passageway used as the dining hall, he simply took the painting of the 1848 battle scene off the wall. In his room, he wrapped it in an immaculate lightly starched sheet but, before tying it carefully with string, he had to admit to himself that this would not be enough. He took another painting off the wall of his own room, packed it along with the first one, and left the apartment unnoticed. He chose these pictures because they were not so large that he couldn’t take them by taxi and he guessed that their value would cover the cost of a mink coat.

He made the phone call the next morning, but he was so terribly excited that he had to start several times; he could hardly swallow, let alone speak.

Mrs. Stefanek picked up the phone and put on her husband immediately.

He did it exactly as his grandmother usually did, as dispassionately and briefly, whenever they ran short of money.

What would you say about a small Egry, Kristóf asked.

About what, asked the photographer crossly.

What I just said, about an early Egry.

The quick-thinking photographer had to restrain his astonishment.

And what would you say about an 1850 Neudorfer.

The photographer mumbled something to the effect that he would have to see.

He could come over with the paintings.

Gyöngyvér related almost everything to Ilona, who in turn passed it on to Kristóf on the day of the funeral. They would go to the Rhodopes for their honeymoon; they’ll fly to Sofia and from there they’ll be taken by car to a beautiful house in the mountains, where Ágost’s Bulgarian friends had invited him earlier. Ágost is crazy about mountains. Ever since being recalled from Bern, he doesn’t know how he has survived in this bleak Hungarian wilderness. They might even encounter snow.

Gyöngyvér has never been in the high mountains or in an airplane; true, she hasn’t seen the sea either.

But Ilona did not understand why they were doing it, why they had to do it like this.

However risky Kristóf’s undertaking was, his timing turned out to be good. On the day of the funeral no one noticed that two paintings were missing. Afterward Kristóf himself forgot the whole thing. Empathy for his aunt overwhelmed him — not because of the death but because he understood, from the proportions of the dignified ceremony and the sight of the assembled mourners, how dependent his aunt and uncle had been on each other and what burdens the two of them had carried on their shoulders together, no matter how ridiculous he had thought them.

The young couple left the following morning.

Which for long days literally paralyzed Mrs. Lehr; shocked, she seemed physically to become one with her black garments.

That her own son should do this to her.

She swallowed the secret wedding; she didn’t have time not to because she had to maintain her dignity until the funeral.

She even liked the idea that at the funeral her son did not have to hide his mistress.

But to leave for their honeymoon the next day, well, that was too much.

Kristóf could not let her be alone, even if he had to keep running to the hospital. Mrs. Lehr forgot that she had wanted to kick him out of her apartment. Luckily for her, her memory could retain Geerte van Groot, because she had no one else left, literally not a single human being.

She did not even say good-bye to her son and daughter-in-law.

André Rott drove them to Ferihegy Airport.

Kristóf stole money again from Ágost’s drawer, so he could take a cab to Klára.

Gyöngyvér was about to raise her voice in the almost empty waiting room of the airport and complain that until now Athens had not been part of the itinerary, and what was this new plan anyway.

Think of what I told you last night, in detail, before we went to bed. I hope you can still remember.

Ágost spoke so quietly and pitilessly that she immediately fell silent.

If you want me to, I can repeat it for you.

She concluded from various circumstances at the Athens airport that they would not actually be visiting the Greek capital, because they were going to continue to either Tel Aviv or Istanbul. In her brand-new cream-colored two-piece suit, with a pillbox hat of the same bouclé fabric, she was now keeping her peace with the discipline of an appointed diplomat’s wife. It was as if she were hearing Margit Huber’s ringing encouragement, not so timidly, Gyöngyvér, sustain, sustain. Don’t control your breathing, that happens by itself, with your abdominal wall. Cheerfully she asked no questions and, carefully nurturing her smile, did not comment on the surprising developments, regardless of what might happen.

She did everything the way Margit Huber would have done.

Ágost could be very satisfied with her.

She saw great benefits in her newly gained self-discipline.

They sat on a comfortable leather couch in the waiting room at the airport for about ten minutes, no more. They hardly spoke because Ágost had to look through his freshly bought newspapers. He took off a glove to stroke the fine leather of the couch. The airport was bustling; objects, mysterious people, and their even more mysterious actions arrested Gyöngyvér’s attention. Occasionally something was announced in a number of languages of which she barely understood anything, but she could not truly listen because of her excitement.

She did not quite register when Ágost put down the newspapers and stood up.

Excuse me, he said with peremptory sternness, and this made Gyöngyvér look up and pay attention. He took off across the large hall with his briefcase.

He could have left it on the couch, but the stupid man even took his overcoat with him.

For the first time in her life, Gyöngyvér was left all alone in the echoing waiting area of an airport. Had she not always been left alone, she probably would not have reacted so vehemently; primal fear would not have awakened in her with such force. She wanted to call after him that she too needed to pee and would like to go along. But it was clear that she had to stay put and keep smiling, if only because of their luggage. Don’t be anxious, Gyöngyvér, remember, the job is to sustain, sustain, and she sustained. This helped a little. Ágost did everything with such apparent assurance, was so maddeningly at home everywhere, that she had to leave things to him.

At least she could see where to go when she’d have to. She was terrified that someone might speak to her and she would not understand.

She could still see, and she never forgot, that Ágost, in his hazel nut-brown millepoint traveling suit, at the far end of this white marble hall divided by pilasters, walked at a very leisurely pace down the marble steps. That is when, and in this way, she saw him for the last time. Later, though, she told the Greek security people interrogating her that, quite inexplicably, he had taken with him not only his briefcase but also his sand-colored Burberry coat.

The basement washroom she found at the bottom of those steps had no other exit, at least she could not find one when an hour later, having lost her patience and already in tears, she managed to entrust the luggage to somebody.

It wasn’t even his briefcase.

What briefcase.

A very nice, brown leather case, she thought it was brand new, she thought it was calfskin, which, along with their other luggage Ágost had taken out of the trunk of his friend’s car at Ferihegy Airport.

What friend.

Now she was confused, uncertain whether to reveal the friend’s name.

Had she seen the briefcase before.

Was she familiar with the contents of the briefcase.

She knew she didn’t have to answer these questions, she should not have mentioned the briefcase at all, or anything else for that matter, because they enjoyed diplomatic immunity, as Ágost had explained in detail the previous evening, but by now it was very late.

It was the same car, André Rott’s, in which one summer morning, after having awakened so happily in the maid’s room of the Pozsonyi Road apartment, they had driven to the Tisza.

As they say, they were as happy as larks that long-ago morning.

She saw that the security men were hooked on the briefcase like fish on the bait.

They jotted down André Rott’s name, but she corrected them, saying she had made a mistake earlier, his real name was András Rott.

As a very suspicious-looking interpreter translated it, she had not seen her husband with that briefcase before and its contents were unknown to her.

Gyöngyvér was living proof that the Hungarian government, in accordance with an agreement, wanted the Eichmann papers delivered to the court in Jerusalem.

Her confession was calculated into the game.

The disappearance of the embassy’s chief counselor on the way to his post was duly recorded, and this official record included the missing person’s overcoat and briefcase.

A Fecund Apricot Tree

He was free at last.

And if he had thought about anything specific during the last happy weeks, anything related both to his everyday activities and to his entire life, then it was this condensed sentence, only four quietly jubilant words, which kept repeating: I’m free at last.

He said this to himself several times a day, hundreds of times a week, without becoming bored with the feeling that could be expressed in these words or with the ultimately empty words themselves.

Silence reigned over the landscape, stillness and peace pervaded the lovely sunshine-filled early summer.

With those four words, which he had heard so many times from released prisoners, he had to reassure himself about the correctness of his feeling, which he had never voiced to himself nor said out loud. In a peaceful state, noisy with the rush of blood, work-induced heavy breathing, and the buzzing of bees, he returned without realizing it to the time of that feeling, which he thought had been lost forever.

Memory first gave him signals when he moved; the movements led him back to knowing how to hold his tools, spade, hoe, and scythe. Then his muscles reminded him how to manage his movements. He returned here, to the past with its out-of-the-way groves, abandoned fields, and empty pastures, vineyards overrun by weeds, and decaying orchards where the normal silence of nature reigned; peace. He wished to reconquer this abandoned landscape with his labor, except that what he had forgotten most during the lapsed time in his life was how to manage his energies sensibly.

A while later, when the remembered movements led his muscles back to the forgotten times, for brief moments his childhood summers flickered up and glowed. An unknown bird would screech. He would look out from behind a grapevine as if peering out from behind the shaded leaves of the erstwhile bower into the wild blue, and he seemed to hear the voice of his long-dead mother calling him. He did not know to what place she was calling him. The blue of the enamel bucket, its familiar clinking, the water, some of which always splashed on his dusty feet — that’s what he remembered, such cloudless summers, the blue enamel bucket.

And the sweetly hovering dust, the sound of cowbells coming closer, together with the approaching twilight, his feet stamping in the dirt.

Now too, time went by, day after day, week after week, without the tiniest cloud in the sky, and it seemed as if all those long-ago summers had also been cruelly and eternally blue. Had he not felt free, had not the river, misty in the cool nights, produced a little dew on the blades of grass each dawn, he would have found these signs threatening, ominous, terrifying.

And they were indeed ominous.

It made a difference how much each planted thing yielded, because he wanted to be sure that what he raised would last through the winter. The threat of a protracted drought hovered over the incandescent landscape. He was free at last. But he could not but remember the long, oppressive, and dizzying spells of privation from his childhood.

When it made a big difference how many of them sat down at the table.

For all he knew, doomsday might be near.

He did not expect rain either.

He rarely saw anyone, did not long for anyone’s company.

Did not think about whether he was cheerful or sad; he was now in the process of forgetting thoughts that were indispensable for the awareness of happiness, just as earlier he had forgotten his youth and childhood. Still, he did sense something of his happiness; after all, he kept telling himself he was free at last. As a person who has reached his destination; his calling was answered by his being free. At last, he kept telling himself, he was free. As if he had served out a long sentence. Perhaps he kept repeating this because he was coming close to a state in which he would neither long for nor insist on anything.

Being bitten by horseflies was the only thing that upset him during these weeks.

And a horsefly bite is indeed very unpleasant.

A horsefly always appears out of the blinding blueness, it circles unnoticed above the deliciously sweating skin, slyly picks its spot, lands gently, and even if you shoo it away, it finds another unprotected spot where it will bite you, ejecting its saliva into the living tissue. If the attack occurred in the middle of the day, there were at least two, sometimes three horseflies coming at him in formation, one to divert his attention while the other two bit him elsewhere. The bite is painful; a hard lump swells under the skin, turns tight and itchy, burns and tingles in the flesh. And if at times like this he turned and bent over his nicely thriving plants more obstinately and restlessly than usual, as though denying that something might be bothering him so much, it was because in his own way he was trying to find an infallible method for outfoxing the horseflies, so to speak.

But he should have realized that horseflies are infallible.

He remembered the horses and the silky-hair-covered bony knot on the tails of cattle, the swishing and slapping sound of their swatting at pests.

After all, he reasoned, a horsefly was not as lighthearted and cunning a creature as the common housefly, but in comparison rather sluggish and clumsy. In the instant it bites you it’s easy to whack it, and it’s no small satisfaction when its dust-gray body cracks under your palm.

But by then it’s too late; its secretion is already spreading and working under the skin.

Whenever the horseflies’ hour arrived, his entire body became covered with gooseflesh because of the awful unrest; he was annoyed, he fumed and grumbled; why wasn’t man more resourceful than a horsefly, being so much smarter. He should be more inventive in that crucial fraction of a second. Why wait for the moment of the bite, why not act beforehand, why does his skin signal him only afterward, he complained. As if with only a little adjustment of Creation everything would be perfect.

Anyway, I’ll kill it, he kept repeating to himself, although in his new life he found these repeated little murders rather disturbing. But his attentiveness, practicality, and circumspection must have had a predetermined sequence, an order with its own definite conditions and boundaries. Despite his struggle and experimentation, despite his belief in the superiority of the human mind, he could not in his own animal state anticipate the moment of the horseflies. He would flail, slap, strike out, dodge, become annoyed, rack his brain, endure the bites, flee, at times rave — not so much at the ancient enemy as at his own human helplessness.

There is nothing more profound, more secretive, and more abominable than hatred conceived in solitude.

He was pensioned off on the last day of February, and after the party given in his honor he did not return to his home in Budapest, the family house on the shore of the Rákos creek he had built with his own hands over ten long years. By then the little wooden house on the other side of the river was ready, fully furnished. He had prepared well in advance for a quiet retirement. He had put away enough money for it too, which no one knew anything about. They had a good time at the Kőkapu, the famous little inn in Vác by the triumphal arch built to honor a visit from Empress Maria Theresa. A traditional haunt of lawyers, prison guards, and released prisoners. He sat at the place of honor, smiling benevolently; no one could have noticed anything exceptional about him. He waited patiently until dawn, though from midnight on he made sure he was gradually sobering up. He knew this was his last drinking binge with the boys. He liked their company; he belonged to them and to no one else in the entire world.

As he sobered up he felt his heart would break when he left them.

He took the first ferry across the icy river.

The ferrymen knew him well; he had been coming and going, spending his days off here for the last two years.

His mates, still tipsy, whooped and shouted farewell from the receding shore of Vác. By then he felt nothing for them.

Only later, in a coldly composed letter, did he inform his family of his final decision. He could hardly write; his emotions, more than anything else, drew the letters from his fingers. Let them wait for him, have the police look for him. But the family would be glad he’d disappeared. They might squander his pension just as they had squandered his salary, but he was going to live here alone and did not want them to visit. He wanted to keep at least his remaining years clean. He had had enough of his wife and son, he no longer needed to know about their deeds or misdeeds — enough of the loud words, fights, and treacherous family intrigues that had filled his life. This is what he wrote, brutally, with his awkward words and ugly penmanship, but there was nothing false in what he put down on paper. Spring was cold that year, windy, overcast, and stormy; he kept warm by the fire in the iron stove. The change did not displease his wife; in fact she was a little sorry the man had turned up at all. She waited a long time before answering his letter. She would have felt happier if he had disappeared without a trace. In a few lines she let him know that his crippled younger brother was dying in the urology ward of Szent János Hospital and in the meantime his irresponsible daughters had been slowly selling everything of any value from the nicely furnished super’s apartment on Teréz Boulevard. They couldn’t wait for their miserable father’s death. And since that apartment was a service apartment, what else would it be, they’d probably have to move out of it, and she worried that they might, being relatives, after all, want to move in with her.

She wouldn’t let them, not the girls and not their unreliable mother.

This was followed by a single sentence, red-hot with anger.

She prays to the Lord Jesus and Mary every night that Balter should not regret his decision.

The woman wrote with nice round letters, like a schoolgirl, being proud to this day that in elementary school her teacher had always held up her handwriting as the example to be followed.

Far from regretting his decision, Balter was surprised to feel that every day spent in freedom made his life more meaningful. A life perfect in all its aspects, in a way he could hitherto not have imagined. Then slowly, gradually, he shed every piece of clothing as regularly as day followed day, as the land slowly grew warmer and later very hot. First he put aside the green quilted jacket, then the shirt, later the wide blue work pants, on a particularly hot afternoon the white undershirt, and finally he kicked off his blue twill shorts that were the same color as his bucket.

He was fifty-seven years old, slept without clothes, and naked stepped out of the house into the blue mornings. His nudity was no more surprising than that of a gracefully aging wild animal.

Just as his body had become indifferent to him, others had to become indifferent to it too.

Strangers’ eyes could see him only from a great distance, anyway.

He could thank fate for his hulking, indolently muscular body.

First the gendarmes kept an eye on him, but then everything turned out differently. His tread was slow and heavy, which might have been the reason no one thought of becoming familiar with him or calling him by his first name.

A man of long strides and slow wits.

His name was Balter. More precisely, that is how people referred to him, Balter did this or Balter did that. His relatives did the same; even his wife had called him Balter for thirty years, as if they enjoyed having the family name be so corporeal and weighty. His only son, who took after him in both build and features and who, to Balter’s great sorrow, also bore his first name, Gyula, got mixed up in very bad company when he was still a child, no matter how much and how often Balter had beaten him. The son led a life that Balter could not follow, neither with his common sense nor with his imagination; he only guessed at what was happening around him, even though his job made him familiar with the inner lives of men.

They had no secrets from him; he knew what they were capable of doing.

Horseflies appear in the middle of July, when the apricots begin to ripen. No matter how many mean things he had committed in his life, how much he had cheated or stolen to supplement his salary and put some money aside secretly for himself, he had never been cruel or tyrannical. Because of the damned horseflies, he first put his wide work pants back on and then his shirt; the flies robbed him of his hard-earned freedom. Frankly he had quite a few things to regret and, strictly speaking, many men would have good reason to beat him up. No matter how much he blustered and flailed about. Several men had indeed threatened him when they got out. To preserve the freedom of his days, putting on his pants and shirt was an inadequate precaution; his neck and profusely perspiring face, so tasty for horseflies, remained bare.

Again, he had to give up more of his freshly gained freedom, again to comply silently with his circumstances and to bargain with them.

When the sun reached its zenith, he put his tools aside and retreated into the shade, where horseflies were reluctant to follow. Still, after several days of senseless battle against the pests, his retreat did not regain for him the peace and quiet he had so joyfully enjoyed before the arrival of the horseflies. To endure again, to wait, to tolerate. This made him wonder whether his miserable younger brother was still alive, but it did not occur to him to take the train on the other side of the river, from the station built in honor of the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph. If his brother was no longer alive, well, so be it.

He did not think so highly of human life that he wished it on anyone.

He kept sitting in the breezy shade of the apricot tree, his head hanging between his drawn-up knees, and he felt a prisoner in his clothes.

That was his greatest worry.

But at least new bites were not irritating his flesh, nothing burned or itched, his skin was no longer tight over the subsiding berry-size lumps.

He could never evaluate what he thought or what he did not know, and he never attributed importance to things he didn’t think about. He tried not to think about his dying kid brother; true, he had never given him much thought. And he definitely did not think about how he had beaten his son and his wife, about the sound of a nose breaking, about flesh being pummeled, about how much hair remained in his hands. This did not mean that he was unable to think about things as flexibly as anyone else, or that in other cases he had not suffered in the absence of certain thoughts. He was not a talkative man, though rather taciturn, not wanting to seem more stupid than he was. But whatever kind of man he was, he could not have had practice in following thoughts woven in solitude and or in finding his way in the thicket of missing thoughts. He no longer thought about the released prisoners’ four-word magic sentence, for he was anything but free, though he did not notice this, since the objects of freedom were still with him: his bucket, his house, his work-induced heavy breathing, the sky’s cloudless blue, his tools, summer’s warmth, his money in the bank, a few pieces of jewelry in a small box hidden under the floor, and his footprint in the dust.

Actually, he began to suffer from the absence of the disappeared words, the four words that had given meaning and rhythm to the passing days, nothing else.

Suffering became quiet and persistent, like the touch of a blunt blade, for it would have been senseless to say the situation was as it was because of horseflies, because of his miserable kid brother, or because the thought of death hovered so close by. The memory of prisoners in his charge kept coming back to him. Sometimes when they went berserk he hit them with his cudgel wherever he could, true, yet he had been one of the friendlier guards, one of those who maintained secret little business connections with the prisoners. He had all sorts of confused desires, though his long-term plans were reasonable enough. For example, he longed for cold beer. He envisioned a very young girl approaching, though he saw very well that the path was as empty as ever.

He dreamed of the hairless lips of a young girl’s vagina.

There was a woman in the village who offered to cook for him so that he, being a man, could have warm meals, but he rejected this indecent offer.

By summer’s end he wanted to reach the stage where he could grow strawberries and raspberries to sell on his small property, as nearly everyone else in the nearby villages did with their household acreage.

For this he first had to dig a well.

A pox on it, maybe he’d get dressed properly and go to the capital to visit his crippled kid brother and especially his brother’s big sluttish daughters who, though they don’t know it, are probably his, their uncle’s, by-blows.

If words won’t do the job, he’ll beat the shit out of them.

Four stakes marked the borders of his garden, but he owned the entire abandoned landscape with his gaze. He stood at the center of an enormous flat plate strewn with lowland groves, willow plantations, uncultivated or barely cultivated fruit orchards and vineyards; beyond the gigantic branches of the invisible river, mountains bulged on the rim of the plate. As if the big wide world started beyond that point, where so many baffling things happened, though none of them had anything to do with him except the expected selling price of strawberries and raspberries. He tried to force all his pleasant and unpleasant thoughts and feelings to the rim of this plate. He did not drink beer. He turned on the radio only on Sunday morning when Gypsies played sweetly plaintive Hungarian melodies.

His visions and images came and dwindled, to be replaced by new ones. The persistently quiet suffering drew myriad little grooves on the old feelings.

He did everything as he had done before and he forgot everything according to his sensibilities, but he began to fear his own emptiness, which he had not noticed before; he especially dreaded the unavoidable, dull suffering.

As if feelings were calling his attention only to things of which he had no definite memories.

Perhaps it was better that he didn’t.

Namely, he was scared that his son or one of the released prisoners might surprise him here.

His own son will kill him.

During the spring days when he was still going about naked, such a thing had not occurred to him; he would not have thought about his son or the prisoners or anyone. When in the afternoons he fastened to his bicycle his two flat plastic containers and went to the public well in the nearest village for drinking water, he carefully locked up the house and hid the key under a stone. The stone often reminded him of his crippled kid brother, whom he used to beat throughout their childhood, and he thought he could use this stone to beat his own son to death. It felt good to beat his brother, he’d longed to do it; after all, their mother wanted it that way. That he should not have to live his miserable life. He understood his mother’s wish that somehow, gradually, he should beat his brother to death.

Only their helpless grandmother tried to protect the cripple, slipping bread crusts to him on the sly, since the others gave him hardly anything to eat.

Every time he came back with the water, he had the impression that in his absence someone had been prowling around the house. And the woman spied on him at the well, showing up with her water cans the minute he arrived. Anger directed at someone specific drew another furrow in his face. And the same thing was repeated when at twilight, as was his custom, he walked to the river to wash up.

He looked for tracks in the silt but found none. Or staying among the willows he watched his property, expecting to notice someone lurking.

He took long twilight shadows for human figures.

These experiences ruined his mood; his quiet rejoicing died away completely because of his fear. His hearing and vision became keener, however. If, having grown weary in the heat of an early summer afternoon, he sensed a brief shadow flitting past above the landscape, he knew without raising his face that it was the golden oriole heading home. Still, he shuddered. All the other similar sounds, shadows, and stirrings repeated themselves with the same regularity; only snaps he could not anticipate made his heart skip a beat.

And he kept seeing over and over how he had thrown the cripple into the freshly forked pig manure.

Better drown in the manure, he can’t work, anyway.

Watch what you’re saying, Teréz, don’t tempt God like that.

You watch it, you shut your stinking mouth or else I’ll sit on it.

You put him out naked in the frost. The Virgin Mary watched over him and saved his miserable life.

Then let your Virgin Mary give him bread.

Once she was merciful to you too.

The ferry receded in the fortieth minute of every hour; in the twentieth minute it approached. With ceaseless buzzing the bees kept busy, with ceaseless jolts and creaks the tipcarts used in the distant stone quarry moved above Dunabogdány. Maybe he’s dead, he thought — he hoped — about his miserable brother, and can speak to me only from afar. At half past ten in the morning, two explosions shook the air, and this was repeated at four in the afternoon. All night long, dump trucks carried stones from the quarry, and when they hurled their load into the bottom of the empty barges, he thought of hell. If he felt some mysterious trembling approach from the bowels of the earth, within half an hour it would turn into the puffing of a tugboat, the loud rumble of its engine; its slow movement occasionally brought with it snatches of radio music in the air. There were also stray noises, a jingling from close by, say, unconnected to any movement; the faint rumbling of a cart, the squeaking of a wheel’s hub, or the noise of shouting, even though no one and nothing seemed to be moving anywhere. Nocturnal singing of some drunk or perhaps that of an approaching or receding ghost, which awakened the village dogs one after the other and they could no longer find rest, howling desperately behind the decaying fences. The steady chirping of crickets. The drawn-out mewling of cats, the persistent music of frogs, the grasshoppers scraping their long legs in the dry grass, the short pops of their takeoffs.

The wider branch of the Danube also brought sounds from the far shore.

So vividly that he seemed to hear, at the appropriate times, the opening of the cells or, in the evening, the reverberation of their closing.

He accompanied them all, from door to door, on the checkered floor of the long circular gallery.

Five months had gone by and he had no reason to regret his decision. He prepared the soil for growing strawberries and raspberries; he hired a well digger. Since he was beginning to learn for the first time in his life what it was like to feel, another furrow grew deep among his feelings. This meant, approximately, that his amorphous dead mother whispered to him, telling him what he should do. After close to thirty years of silence, his mother now spoke as a guardian spirit, from which he concluded that this guardian spirit had always been standing by him because it had no other place. Neither of them had any other place. Even if they had put away his miserable kid brother, they wouldn’t have done anything bad. As if he were saying, laughing hard, in that case I wouldn’t have been fucking around with his wife. In retrospect he regretted not having had that lecherous woman in his life. It seemed that his brother had to stay alive if only for this reason. He had a better time with her than with his own wife. Considering one’s entire life one deserves this much. This was the thought that strengthened him in his final verdict against his wife. Sometimes she tried, made an effort, and sometimes she didn’t, but what could be done if they had no understanding between them.

And that, after all, is painful for a man too.

At the same time another thought made him equally uncertain. Ever since his hearing had sharpened, this other thought also deepened the bluntly aching furrows in the place of silenced memories. As if he had not chosen the right place for himself. As if throughout a lifetime his wife had been doing with his son what his own mother had done with him. That is how his fate caught up with him. He did not regret his decision, he tried not to regret anything; the prices of strawberries and blueberries will be good, but now he heard sounds of the last thirty years coming too close. His fate had him in a double bind. The distance that had seemed, from the other side of the river, looking out from behind the high prison walls, infinitely far and unreachable seemed but a stone’s throw away when looked at under an open sky. From the other shore freedom had seemed different from what it seemed to be here. For ten years he had been preparing for retirement, he’d bought this abandoned fruit orchard in the Tótfalu area seven years ago, it took two years to build his house on his days off, and the more he insisted to himself that he hadn’t erred, that he couldn’t have made an enormous mistake, the stronger his doubts became. He now received what his kid brother and father had received from the mutual protective alliance forged between him and his mother. Still, the unpleasant feelings had a pleasant side. He could not help hearing those insinuating snatches of sound from which he at last had freed himself.

And this was no small gratification.

When at dusk he went to wash up in the river and while he stood in the water up to his ankles, soaping his body, his eyes gazed longer and longer at the towering prison walls on the far shore.

It happened on one of these quiet summer days that another human being appeared in the landscape, congenial even in its isolation.

This man had very vague notions about where he was coming from and no notion whatsoever about where he was going.

Where he had come from must have been a bad place, since moving in itself, being on the move, was good for him. He possessed abstract and refined notions such as those whose lack Balter was beginning to realize in himself but did not know what to do with because he had no experience in abstraction. The further this other man moved from the palpably bad, the more he showered himself, in his heart and mind, with inexplicable good — until everything turned out to be good for him and none of the bad remained. He had crossed over on the other branch of the river, on the Visegrád side, so the ferrymen had not brought him here.

A few people saw him walk slowly across the bridge at Tótfalu.

He did not have to engage anyone in conversation. He couldn’t have, anyway, because he thought exclusively according to the most ethical standards.

If someone had stopped him and told him to turn on his heels and go back where he came from and be quick about it or else he’d be in big trouble, at most the threatening tone might have frightened him. This is how he interpreted for himself what he did not understand in this world, putting things into his own language after some delay. There was nothing wrong with his organs of hearing or speech; as a child, he was just like all the other children. He became the victim of an adolescent shock and since then had neither heard nor spoken, and instead of seeing people’s faces he saw only vague spots. He did not look anyone in the eye. Ever since that incident, the condensed sense of any one moment of his life, good or bad, could almost completely replace the condensed sense of any other moment, good or bad; in one respect, then, he was occupying himself with the same kind of ethical issue that philosophers — always touchy about their concepts — have worried about ever since Aristotle.

Chaos could set in, however, when he happened to linger in the murky waters of the bad or in the very mud of the worst, because to remind him then of the good with nice words was futile. While in the thicket of good he could still almost remember the bad, but if he did not behave himself and was administered additional doses of bad, even with the kindest medical intentions he disappeared completely.

This is how he thought about things.

In his exterior, by the way, there was nothing conspicuous.

His slight build, acquired before the adolescent shock, a hesitant good-natured smile on his lips, large, badly scratched, and infected pimples on his forehead, scabs on top of scabs ready to bleed at any time, and the shirt of his brand-new dark-blue workman’s clothes buttoned to his neck made him seem much younger than his years. Heavy black stubble covered his face; still, he could be taken for a pale apprentice sent to the store for a couple of rolls and half a liter of milk.

He had been on the road for three days.

He’d escaped from an asylum in the Buda area and had been peacefully making his way across the mountains. He first stole something to eat in Pilisszenkereszt and then in Pilisszentlászló. At Leányfalu there was an ice-cream vendor, and he came off the mountain to the highway that ran like a ribbon along the foot of the mountain, but he couldn’t get his hands on any ice cream.

The vendor was hawking his merchandise on the steep, badly paved streets. His wagon bounced on the cobblestones as he worked to keep it steady, and he never left it unguarded, not even for a second.

Now the road was leading him through this miserable little village, stifled in the midday heat, where neither trees nor bushes could grow tall, not around the houses and not in the gardens. There wasn’t any shade anywhere. Only in the churchyards or on the priest’s and parson’s quiet properties could one see some old linden trees. Dogs lying in the shade of whitewashed walls or gates did not bark at him, because his feet made little sound. He wore loosely laced much-too-large ankle boots that flapped a bit, and no socks.

He had filched the boots and the new workman’s clothes the day before in Leányfalu from an open and unattended trailer for workers while the road-building Gypsies were having a beer in the nearby roadside kitchen with Bizsók, their older, Hungarian work manager. In exchange he left behind the clothes he had on, just as he pulled them off his body; he had stolen those the day before from a weekend mountain lodge he had broken into, where later the astonished owners found his old pair of pants, ripped at the seat and around the knees, a pair of bad-smelling white sneakers, and a striped pajama jacket with the oval emblem, reminiscent of a bloodstain, of the health institution from which he had escaped.

Hens were pecking in the open ditch running in front of the houses, and when he stopped at a roadside morello tree to eat some of the overripe fruit, a rooster began to crow in the bare yard.

He probably would not have moved on until he had eaten all the fruit he could reach or until some indignant person ran out from behind the picket fence, under repair, to protest his stealing the sour cherries. But people in the general store across the street noticed him and, somewhat puzzled, acknowledged that in the midday heat a stranger had appeared in their village. And then, before they could make any comment, a medium-size truck whizzed by at breakneck speed, tarps flapping wildly, a cloud of dust in its wake exuding the smell of freshly baked bread.

The bread’s here, Mariska, shouted an older man toward the darkened house behind the picket fence, and the women in the store were saying the same thing.

It did come, after all.

Didn’t I tell you it would. You see.

Every day, the arrival of the bread was regarded as exceptional since on some days no bread came at all or the amount delivered was much less than was needed. The villagers had to be on the lookout. Ever since they had handed over their land and animals to the cooperative farm, they hadn’t baked at home. They received grain from the cooperative according to work units performed, but for miles around not a single mill remained where they might have ground their meager stores of grain into flour; eventually they dismantled the brick ovens in their homes too.

The truck slowed down and then in a wide arc backed up to the store’s open door.

Without a word the stranger followed the scent of the bread.

That day there was no midday ringing of bells.

No wonder then that Balter, who had been cooling himself under his fecund apricot tree while waiting for the midday bell, felt an unjustified restlessness in the silence.

This day remained in the village’s history as the day on which it should have been midday at any moment but midday never arrived.

Ever since horseflies had forced him to retreat, he had no need for a watch, because this hour was the culmination of Balter’s day.

The horseflies signaled that the sun was at its zenith.

He took cover from them in the shade, taking his time, carefully removing his perspiration-soaked shirt and hanging it on a sunny branch. Sat down on the bare sand and let mild shady breezes slowly evaporate the moisture from his skin. It felt good to stretch his limbs, tired from the morning’s work, and give them a little longer to rest. His eyes closed from time to time, he could easily doze off. His eyes emerged again from under his heavy eyelids only when he saw or felt something that ultimately he could not have seen or felt.

On this day, for example, midday did not happen.

Which he would have to understand somehow if he wanted to accept it. When he was working, he met with the more pleasant or more unpleasant half of the same recurring thoughts: he was either happy or anxious, struggling with his doubts or praising his circumstances. But in the hours of idleness, sensations and notions signaled their existence with no pleasant or unpleasant sides. They simply existed, like a mirage among existing things, though one’s hand could grasp neither the crank of a well nor a church bell rope that appeared in a mirage. He felt his mother’s hands resting on his shoulders; heard the thick soup sloshing in the multilayered food container, which in his imagination the slender girl-child brought to him every noon, a girl who probably did not exist in the real world.

The monotonous buzzing of bees became painfully beautiful radio music in his ears; cool foam from the top of a beer bottle spilled on the ground.

And once he was at peace with the sensations and images, there was no point in doing more either for or against them.

That day, way past the time when the first strike of the bell should have sounded, he slowly raised his head, which he had lowered between his spread knees. He began to wait for the sound that, deceiving his senses, remained absent. Perhaps it had come but he’d slept through it. Actually, he should have also heard all the bells from the cathedral town on the other side of the river.

At any rate, judging by the light, he figured it had to be at least an hour past noon.

Nothing was happening in the motionless heat.

He was waiting for a nonexistent ringing of bells. Settled in his ears were old sound-memories of the bell in Jászberény.

And then the thought positively pounced on him: he must have gone mad a long time ago. He waited patiently for the thought or sensation to pass, but waiting did not change the insane condition. Light made time disappear in itself, and that was the reason nothing could happen around him that would return his stolen property.

Or perhaps an atomic bomb had been dropped somewhere after all, as they had promised it would be, and he was the only one left alive for miles around, all alone. In his fear he should get up. Everyone had perished; no living thing was left except him.

In the meantime his shirt had dried on the branch, from which he had to conclude that some amount of real time must have passed. He looked up into the foliage as if expecting a message there. Then his wife must have perished in some bad way, and it felt good to acknowledge that. His kid brother must have gone with her; at least no one could blame him for their miserable lives.

He saw nothing unusual in the foliage. But the sky above was incandescent.

This apricot tree stood at the center not only of his garden but also of his heart and thoughts.

Ten years earlier, when after a wedding feast that had stretched into dawn he took leave of his friends and went roaming aimlessly in the unfamiliar fields, he picked out not a site for the coming years but this gigantic apricot tree. Or one should say that between him and the apricot tree it was the tree that decided their common fate. Innocently, he urinated on the tree trunk, looking up involuntarily at its branches heavy with fruit. Stuffed with rich food, drunk on cheap drink, his voice surfaced to say that he should live here. And the unclaimed apricot tree dryly confirmed, yes, you’ll live here with me, you have no other place.

The tree stood at the center of a flat bare landscape; more precisely, it gave meaning to the wide-open nothingness staring at the sky. He had never experienced anything like this in his life. No apricot tree grows this big. He didn’t have to do work on it, because he never found even a single little dry branch or worm-eaten holes in the trunk or worms in its fruit. It raised its enormous, healthily dense, and proportionately arranged crown above the flat world. Reddish veins ran along the stalks of its shiny waxen leaves. It gripped the loose soil with roots as thick as a man’s arm, because in its youth it very prudently had allowed the dominant wind in the area to tilt it a bit. It seemed to have acquired its circumstances with its shape. It was the sole survivor of a former fruit orchard. Every two years it had an abundant crop of juicy, richly colored, aromatic, tasty fruit.

Now he was standing under his apricot tree, holding in his hand the elusive proof of measured time: his dry shirt.

A little later he saw two bicycling figures approach.

Because in the meantime the pastor had come home from his mission in the cathedral town across the river, and been told by the puzzled yet malicious ferrymen that there had been no noonday bell. They were godless, all of them, and if they could do nothing else they swore terribly in front of their pastor. And he waited in vain for his grandson, first by the window in his cool office and much later at the gate; the boy didn’t come home on the street but turned up much later from the direction of the gardens. When he heard behind his back the dull thud of feet on the long brick-paved veranda, at least he no longer had to struggle with a fear that perhaps the boy had drowned in the river.

He was puffing like a child.

With the momentum of his inexplicable anger, the pastor swiveled around and Dávid received a powerful slap on the face.

Barefoot, wearing only his small red bathing trunks, the very shy, daydreaming teenager stood before him, shirt in hand. He was at the age when boys begin to grow as if they were being stretched and their voices deepen but they are completely unaware of the maturing processes in their bodies. From running, his thin naked body was thickly covered with dust in which his perspiration drew stripes.

He’d run more than two kilometers in the scorching sun. In his head, throbbing with the pulsing blood, the heat, the thumping of his feet, and fear, he had thoroughly prepared to account for his time, but this he hadn’t expected. He’d known that his negligence would not go unpunished, and he also knew that his grandfather would be back from the city at half past one. But the slap caught him unprepared. He had truly hoped that his grandfather would not be told of his negligence. He had to make his carefully prepared explanation credible, and therefore he could not pay much attention to the sudden physical or mental pain.

The effort to ignore it distorted his features, but his eyes, filled with real tears, remained attentive. And, waving his blue-striped shirt, he said, winded and weeping, that a man had wanted to take this away from him.

What man wanted to take it from you, what did he want to take from you, shouted the pastor, famed equally for his great physical strength and for his gentleness.

His voice reverberated down the street.

How could he miss the boy’s cunning look.

It seemed he not only had to avenge the already committed negligence but might also be catching his grandson on the verge of telling a terrible lie, committing a deadly sin.

Dávid had never heard such sounds escaping from his grandfather. In his alarm he wanted to add something to his explanation, but anger at his grandfather blocked his words.

How dare he hit him.

If Melinda had been here, he wouldn’t have dared. But at the moment his much older sister was visiting in an old villa in Leányfalu, working on her dissertation out on the villa’s lovely wood-framed veranda. Without Melinda he had no support. His mumbled words turned into hiccups, but he managed to squeeze out that he had no idea who the strange man was except that he was completely naked.

The pastor did not intend to restrain his raging anger. He regretted neither his loud outburst nor the slap. Let everyone on the street see it and hear it. He owed this much to his prestige in the village.

The negligence is unforgivable; it cannot remain unpunished.

But the words, coming out twisted because of the crying and hiccupping, made him lose confidence.

What naked man, the pastor groaned.

A hot rush of blood in his eyes darkened the yard, shaded by chestnut and linden trees.

Where is he, he groaned.

If someone had told him, trembling and devastated, that his grandson had drowned in the river, then his faith in the boy’s innocence would have poured balm on his immense pain, and he would have accepted God’s will. But the way things were, he had to take himself into the worst thicket of horrors. Had to be careful what to ask and how loudly to ask it. The sun beat down mercilessly on the back of his thick neck and a single careless step might pull his heavy body into the bog.

The village had to be compensated, but it did not have to know everything.

The prison guard from Vác came to mind first; many people talked about this man because he shopped in the general store and took his water from the common well, but he had not yet met him or seen him walking about naked, not even from far away.

If he had not been blinded by anger, he would have sensed the nature of the problem immediately, because Dávid would never show himself naked in front of anyone, not even in the greatest heat. He yanked the boy to him with both hands. He wanted to know everything. Peremptorily, shaking the boy’s bare shoulders, he asked what the man had done to him.

Dávid sobbed, leaning against his grandfather’s chest.

He tried to make it understood that he was sobbing, trembling, and reproachful because of the mercilessness of that slap. But in fact his helplessness was weeping behind the deceit.

He didn’t do anything, he sobbed.

And where did you leave your pants, asked the pastor, his voice growing thin as his impatience mounted.

He took away my pants, cried the boy. He wanted to take away my shirt.

As if the boy’s smudgy tears were dissolving his light body on the pastor’s chest.

The innocence of this reply gave the pastor some relief, yet fighting his conciliatory urge he thrust his grandson away, but without letting go of him.

Why would he take away your pants, how could anybody take away your pants, he shouted.

The boy stopped bawling, he was hiccupping. From his grandfather’s point of view he indeed had to consider himself an incorrigible recidivist many times over, so it was important to muster everything he could to dispel all possible suspicion. From his incoherent answer his grandfather understood only that he had been to the big pit.

He admits having gone into the water and having swum to the other side. From there he saw the man taking his pants away.

He ran after him, managed to get the shirt out of his hand but failed to retrieve the pants.

Gone were his nice summer pants.

At this, the pastor released his grandson from his strong grip and with large steps took off for the shed.

What the villagers called the big pit was a long-abandoned sand mine. More than a hundred years earlier Gypsies had made adobe here every summer. They soon ran out of the material necessary for adobe. Under the layer of clay was an enormous amount of brimstone-yellow sand glittering with quartz; people came to take it away by the wagonload, even from faraway villages. They gave up sand mining only when they reached, about four meters down, a water-permeable layer of gravel in direct contact with the riverbed. The gravel was peculiarly granulated, like rare pearls. And the shovels turned over rather curious things in it. Shards of pottery burned black, sooty bellies, ears, and beaks of cooking vessels with small legs. Worn-down thin blades of crudely forged iron tools and human bones turned spongy or polished to a marble smoothness: split pelvises, skulls smashed in with battle-axes, and fractured shinbones.

The first heavy snowfall put an end to a shameful treasure hunt.

Older people still recall the spring when, where the pit had been, they found a lovely round little pond with translucently motionless water.

Now not even children went to swim in it because nobody could forget that there was a cemetery under the water. And strangers had no way of knowing that behind the clusters of trees this pond lay concealed. What was under the water was a treacherously destroyed military camp of the early Avar era.* Ice-cold ghosts populated the area; the pond became the home of ringed snakes, water spiders, and frogs. His grandfather did not believe in ghosts but he forbade Dávid to go into the water there alone. No one who lives on the shore of this mighty river should forget that water is strong and always unpredictable. Silver-leafed and gray-trunked poplars, willows slowly dripping their sap, and thick growth of shrubs surrounded the pond and barely let the light graze its mirrorlike surface. That day, Dávid was at the pond when he should have been at the belfry to ring the bell. Here the trees had spread their branches so generously that the surface of the pond could not be seen even from the church tower, so he believed that his peculiar feeling was safely concealed and for the first time in his life he forgot about ringing the bell. He did not forget the place itself and the hearsay connected with it, not to mention the relevant proscriptions. Almost every year he spent his vacation months with his grandfather. Once, when still a small child, amid terrible shuddering, he had swum across the pond all by himself on a dare and a bet.

He won a popgun, which in the end he did not get.

He did not take the fears of the local boys very seriously, but despite all the prohibitions he too was a little afraid of ghosts. This summer he rarely did things together with the boys. He preferred the dark, cool, and spacious rooms of the parsonage, where he read romantic English novels, replete with screeching wind in old fireplaces, abandoned dusty rooms, and haunting ghosts in whose company he roamed by himself, dreaming of his future life, or together with them looked for isolated places by the river whence he could observe the bathers and rowers who sometimes camped on the island for weeks and lived their own mysterious lives before his eyes.

He sentenced himself to sheer observance; he tried to renounce everything that might be considered amusement or was beyond a strictly objective survey of the world. He was curious to learn what the minimal activity was that he needed to exist. His impression was that the smaller the area of contact with his surroundings, the smaller his food intake, and the less love spent on others, the more clearly he would see his own intentions, would not lose his way, and could hope to find more meaning in his actions in the dim world of instincts and in the pitiless chaos churned up by adults.

His grandfather noticed in all this only that the otherwise lively and talkative boy now fell silent for days, the once voracious child hardly touched his food, sat daydreaming with a book in his hands, listened to inspiring parables with a blank expression of incomprehension, evaded questions showing concern about him, or simply lied. The grandfather could not have known that the boy’s monastic vows, made to himself, were dictating and determining this changed behavior.

He was silent not because he had something to hide but because he had vowed not to speak. He picked at his food not because he had no appetite but because he was testing his self-control. He was daydreaming not because he was uninterested in the continuing chapters in his grandfather’s devotional history but because he was timing the duration of his ability to keep his mind on a single topic.

He failed with his most delicate vows.

He decided not to let his thoughts flit about unbridled. He also decided not to go to the pond ever again since he already knew everything there was to know about it; but a compelling force was still at work contrary to his vows, and no matter how carefully he listened for it he could not catch it; undetected, it laid him low. Indeed, he knew everything in advance that was worth knowing of the joy and sorrow of sheer existence, but he considered his knowledge as straying, because he had no idea that everyone had the same experiences.

There is no human being without a functioning presentiment. He wanted to overcome his penchant for this sort of special knowledge and experience, but for that he would first have had to ascertain the falseness of his experiences and the incorrectness of his knowledge. He found no finer tools than those already at his disposal. The greater ascetic authority he acquired over himself, the greater his awareness became that this was still not adequate knowledge or experience. The rectitude of presentiment can be checked only over time; one has to look back on it from the distance of decades.

He began resorting to trickery and double-dealing, and not only with his grandfather but with himself too.

He wanted to reach the point of having no wishes, since they color all exact knowledge, and thus he could not imagine what the world would be like without him.

He wanted at all cost to keep from going to the pond; and if he did go, he had to do so as if it had no significance, with no continuation or consequence. The deep, slightly inclining former wagon trail led him into the dense thicket. Uninitiated eyes could detect no road here. The hard clumps of grass covering the erstwhile wheel tracks never sprouted into bushes or nettles. A forward-moving body brushed open the loosely bent shrub branches, which would then close gently behind it.

He met with his death and with rebirth.

He would hide for good from all human eyes; nothing would reach him. With these words did the unavoidable feeling address him. If he succeeded in withdrawing himself from the world, he would see what he’d become.

Everything was part of this single feeling: the touch of every branch bending aside and closing behind him, the soft squelching of his steps, the silence made vaporous by the midday heat, the alarmed screeching and awkward flight of pheasants startled from their cool hiding place, the gooseflesh gently invading his skin, and the blind certainty with which his feet led his eyes to the sight of the calm water revealing itself to him. And his feeling was not changeable, depending on what happened; he reached it differently on each occasion.

He entered a place, he arrived at a place whither he never need return.

A sense of mortality addressed him with words like these. He could not want anything else or anything more, because the peculiarity of his feeling was that no compulsion or wish could touch him.

The poplars tilted up their leaves with their silver undersides, the rich undergrowth under the willows dripped their sap, saplings reached for the light, dwarf elders, sharp grass of tussock, bulrush, meaty-leaved saltbush, and emerald-green moss completely covered the pebbly soil all the way to the edge of the small pond. That the pond’s seemingly motionless surface still moved somewhat could be measured on the narrow strip of sand that with its brimstone-yellow edge encircled the water. It was as if the water were breathing; its inhalations and exhalations, rising and falling, left telltale wet traces, though it was impossible to know if it was secret waves or a flood tide.

Of course he lied to his grandfather; he had not swum across the pond that day, he had simply walked around it on the wet sand. He had to protect his feelings from every strange opinion. This was a pagan ritual into which he could not initiate his grandfather, who officially and passionately persecuted all superstition and paganism. Out of necessity Dávid gave himself up so he could keep the main thing a secret.

It began when he slipped out of his shirt, kicked off his sandals, and then took off his pants and laid them on the green. But he did not take off his bathing trunks or underpants. He had to be very precise when stepping on the wet gray sand; he allowed neither his heels nor his toes to touch the dry yellow sand or to slip into the water. His soles could sink only deep enough to leave a discernable trace in the wet sand. From time to time he looked back. Moving this way he circled the pond, and by the time he stepped out of his masterfully calculated last footprint, the outline of the first one had faded almost to invisibility. Now he had to step into this one so the wet sand would not drink or swallow forever his former steps. He stepped exactly, precisely, into his own footsteps; this peculiar passion, to continue his way around the pond in his own fading footprints, was so powerful that he may never have missed a step.

And when he returned for the third time, the once-reinforced traces had not faded as much as they had the first time. As the number of completed rounds increased, the deeper the traces of the eternal metamorphosis became, though they always lost some sharpness in their outline.

This was no game. The story behind it was no more than the story of a mathematical problem solved with numbers.

He paid attention to nothing except making sure his steps precisely covered his previous steps. That is how the glowing imperfection of every step on the wet sand became permanent.

There was a direct connection between the depth of his footprints and his own imperfection.

He worked himself up to a ritual concentration, seeking nothing in the world except the most perfectly matching footprints, satisfying his need for perfection by nothing but flashes of light gliding on the water, the dense thicket, and the swishing of the giant trees’ green wall, everything he caught with his peripheral vision. He had to place his feet in the previous footprints with increasing decisiveness because with every step he was approaching the bottom of the sand. When he reached silt, the silt always spilled into the hollows where water had been forced out by pressure, between the empty footprints and his toes.

From then on he destroyed something with every step. First his steps made the upper rim of the footprints cave in; later, the entire sand wall of the print collapsed too.

He could not stop or in any way give up this ritual undertaking.

It turned into a cold, pure intoxication that removed from his consciousness the image of beginning or end.

His feet were squelching in tiny muddy puddles.

Earlier he had taken off his pants so that no possible traces of muddy silt on them would betray his secret activity. He would have felt his sense of honor violated if he’d voluntarily stepped out of the circle. The pleasure was so pervasive that even the sight of the muck pressing up between his toes, its smooth matter, and the stench rising from the gray bog, which nauseated him, was part of his peculiar feeling, as was the gentle grazing of the wet sand’s surface with his first steps. He did not quicken his stride, but the silt welling up between his toes made his steps grow heavy. Slowing down held the threat of having to return to the outside world.

The closer he got to a sense of finality, the more unsatisfactorily his feet carried him.

Until, hurling himself onto dry grassy sand, he collapsed.

He always made sure he fell on his side, not to leave traces in the sand of his eternal defeat.

That is the sum of a young body’s share of sobering lessons. He rolled onto his back, lolling on the green with outstretched arms, his temples and his heart beating to an upset rhythm.

He could not hope to go higher or lower than this. He could not tell how much time had elapsed. It was impossible to imagine what would happen to him or where he had come from.

It must have been around noon, because for some time his hearing registered the combined sounds of the cathedral bells coming from the other side of the great river. He could not have said who had suffered defeat as the result of his victory or what sort of defeat had cast a shadow on his victory. He did not want to die, neither his body nor his mind had sufficient reasons for it; still, he did not manage to die. He did not want to return; having been reborn, he had no good reason to traipse back on the old dirt road; still, he was alive.

His sadness was stronger than his other feelings, but that is what made the feeling so uplifting.

He kept closing and opening his eyes.

How beautiful the blue of the sky.

He had been engaged to death ever since his birth, which he knew well because his mother had passed away during it, her heart had simply given out.

How could he understand that he need not feel guilty about his birth.

He filled the distant emptiness of beauty with the original darkness of his consciousness.

While his breathing did not subside, this darkness was filled with velvety red and sharply vibrating yellow images. If he wanted to be free of them he could open his eyes on the motionless blue sky, and then nothing bothered him, he was free, truly free.

He was too busy with these special feelings to notice the approaching noise.

When he first heard it far off, he assumed an animal was making it. It ceased for a long time and then recurred without sounding any closer.

By the time he raised his head, he wouldn’t have had time to jump up and disappear into the thicket unnoticed.

A strange young man was standing under the trees on the other side of the water, where Dávid had taken off his pants, shirt, and sandals. It was most peculiar that the stranger had not noticed him or his clothes. He had a whole loaf of bread under his arm; he was deeply engrossed in munching on it. Before he swallowed one mouthful, he bent down like a bird reaching under its wing with its beak and tore out the next bite with his teeth. He did this eagerly, but chewed very collectedly, his eyes roaming all the time. But he didn’t see what he was looking at. He did not notice the boy watching him from the other side. Mixing his saliva with the bread was good, swallowing was good, grinding his jaws was good, ripping the bread felt good on his teeth, the mildly salty taste was good, the crunching and the gentle fragrance were good, and every good had a shining picture.

These pictures probably blinded him. And because he so passionately strove for the good, paying no particular attention to the circumstances, his petty thievery did not cause him any moral problems. Bad was something that prevented the existence of good. The taste of sour cherries was good but the smell of bread instantly wiped away the shining pictures of this good and the picture of fragrance emanating from the tarp-covered truck became the good. He did not compare one good with the other; he did not brood over things or weigh them.

Bread was transported from the bakery in the neighboring village in airy crates. The loaves were regulation-size, pale brown and plump; knives liked to crack their crispy crust. The driver would push the high-piled crates to the edge of the truck bed and his assistant would carry them on his shoulder into the store. A large loaf cost six forints. The assistant called in sick that day, but everyone knew he had to go to Kisoroszi to hoe corn at his stern mother-in-law’s place.

That is why the truck was unguarded for a few minutes. When the driver jumped out of his vehicle, shipping bills in hand, and flung the tarp up to reach the crates, he barely glanced at the approaching youngster. While the driver was busy with the papers in the store, the youngster had no difficulty in taking a loaf out of the nearest crate. He did not move on right away; standing by the truck, he kept sniffing the pointy ends of the bread. Where should he bite into it, here or there. Where should one bite first if the bread offers two tempting ends at the same time. Finally, he did not take a bite but carefully put the loaf under his arm and took off.

And the rather delayed shouts reached him only when he was already walking slowly along the empty road.

Neither the elderly presbyter mending his fence, Jani Rácz, nor the women looking out of the store could have confused him with anyone. After all, they’d seen him eating somebody else’s sour cherries off the tree and already had wanted to shout at him then. They tarried because he was wearing the same kind of worker’s clothes that the driver’s assistant wore and even reached for the loaf with the same movement. He lifted it out as a person well within his rights, about whose pure intentions there could be no doubt. The presbyter did not believe his old eyes, as he said. He put down the hammer and seemed to be taking out of his mouth the nails he’d been holding between his lips, and then he opened his mouth wide with amazement.

It occurred to the women that the driver might have been assigned a new assistant, at least some of them claimed that later. Sometimes one thinks contrary to one’s knowledge or sensory experience. The first sound came from the old presbyter. He didn’t think it was necessary to take off after the thief, but inaction offended his sense of justice. Then the women, interrupting one another, shouted thief and swarmed out of the store. The presbyter dashed to the street, brandishing his hammer, as if to knock the thief dead on the spot, and, pointing the hammer to the other side of the street, yelled that somebody had stolen some bread. It would hurt his prestige to repeat himself. A person of consequence cannot run after a thief in plain sight of the villagers just because of a few sour cherries and a loaf of bread. As he related later, in the inn near the bridge, at the sight of such impudence he felt his feet rooted to the ground. Meanwhile the chaos in and in front of the general store grew to such proportions that it was as if, God knows, the women had been witnessing a major crime.

The baldheaded little driver, in his rakish cap with a too-small visor, did not understand what the women wanted of him.

What should he do now.

He grinned at them, showing his healthy white teeth.

At this time, Balter was sitting under the apricot tree with his head hung between his knees.

Dávid was rounding the pond for the second time.

When the driver caught on, he ran out of the store along with the shouting women, but by then the thief not only was far away but, because he sensed something bad in the shouts, had finally broken into a run, taking his bread with him.

The main square led to the end of the village, which was bare, not a forest, not an orchard, not a bush anywhere; he could not disappear into empty pasture. He made the choice a pursued animal would make: he jumped into the roadside ditch and made his way thence to a lower-lying dirt road.

The driver could have either run after him or, jumping into the truck, caught up with him on the dirt road, producing enormous clouds of dust, probably. He waved dismissively with the shipping bills in his hand. Later, by way of explanation, he said he didn’t have time for things like that; he had to deliver fresh bread to six stores in four villages within two hours.

That is how a moment in which many other things might have been decided came to an end.

Later Dávid did not dare move, even though there was nothing frightening about the stranger. He saw him as both gentle and wild.

Yet he felt as if he had been caught doing something wrong. As if people were saying, well, well, you’re up to something terribly bad and are rotten to the core. It was as if he discovered in the fugitive’s face the pitiful guilelessness of his own life thus far.

That is when, at Vác, the pastor stepped onto the ferry ready to depart.

And Dávid was frightened not so much by the possibility that the stranger might have observed him but by his being the one doing the watching and observing of an unsuspecting stranger. He wanted to shout something, a friendly greeting. As is usual in such cases, no sound issued from his throat.

And that reminded him of his negligence, the bell-ringing.

Thanks to his objectivity, by the way, he was the only one not taken in by the fugitive’s appearance. Twenty-five years old, he later told the police without thinking, and he was off by only a few months.

He jumped up to run away; perhaps the stranger wouldn’t notice him doing that. The food stopped moving in his mouth and, as if he had come upon tastier loot, he stepped with his booted feet on Dávid’s clothes. In the bubble in which the good ruled exclusively, something happened that the adolescent boy, upset by his own negligence, could not comprehend. The fugitive put the loaf with its chewed-off end on the ground, plopped down next to it, tugging and yanking at his ankle boots until he’d pulled them off his feet, and then threw both of them into the water. What Dávid understood from the nature of these movements was that the fugitive was struggling not with his boots but with the devil and wanted to be free of it, and he tried to explain this to the police officers. The first boot had barely filled with water when the second one followed, and they both sank at about the same time.

According to the records the young man was a patient incapable of controlling or taking care of himself. If, using drugs, they tried to make him see reason, he became aware only of the bad. This was not his first escape. When he was taken back to the institution, things would still be bad but no one would have trouble with him for a long time, and thus he managed each time to allay suspicion. He hardly ever talked or made a sound, and he did not hear many sounds either; he either sat or lay on his bed. If they did not tie him down, he might spend an entire day getting dressed and undressed. Whenever he could, he stole other people’s clothes to put on instead of his own. And to keep other inmates from beating him up for his thievery, the attendants preferred to tie him up. When unable to get dressed and undressed, he felt as if he were crouching at the bottom of a deep pit. The pit was narrow; he could not stretch out his arms in it. Up above the sun did not shine, the wind did not blow, no snow fell, and there was no rain in the world, but it was somewhat lighter than down here at the bottom of the pit.

Water dripped from the thick clay walls. Frogs, worms, and all sorts of reptiles lived with him at the wet bottom of the pit. An impassive observer might claim that he was wearing his institutional pajamas, but he had to protect his skin from the slippery creatures; his skin hurt, it hurt everywhere, and he also had to be sure that none of these creatures managed to nestle in some part of his body. He made movements as if only the instinct of self-defense had left any memories in his mind. Still, sometimes snakes, spiders, or lizards crawled into his ears or through his nostrils into his brain. They penetrated his mouth and his rectum, and then, he felt, they multiplied. The attendants did not help; he asked them in vain, pleading with them quietly. If very rarely he managed to cough up, vomit, blow out, or evacuate the evil vermin, right away they crawled back in somewhere else.

And when the situation became untenable, when so much bad could not exist without a tiny bit of good, then the desire to be naked, so necessary for his body’s defense, endowed his limbs with a power whose strength was at least as terrible as the pain of his defenseless nakedness had been.

At such times either they trapped him and pumped him with a bigger dose of sedative than usual, or he managed to climb out of the slippery pit unnoticed and leave unnoticed.

If someone had observed Dávid repeatedly circling the pond, keeping to his ever-deepening and quickly fading footprints, in the end raising squelching clumps of clay with his feet to the point of exhaustion, that person could not have said to what temptation the boy was surrendering himself. We can know so little about one another. And Dávid could not have said why the stranger had thrown his boots into the water, why, jumping up from his sitting position, he seemed to be compelled to shed his skin, why he tore off his blue worker’s shirt, why he shoved his pants down to his ankles, why he hopped around, stumbling like that, why he stepped out of them, and then why, once he was naked, the vehement resistance in him subsided.

Underneath the blindingly pale skin, his bare frame showed clearly, pivoting on its joints.

The sight made Dávid forget his negligence; his fear, his aggressive mood, his self-accusation and anger all got stuck in his throat like a piece of bread gone the wrong way. The stranger crouched, keeping his knees together, and, wobbling as he sought his balance, first pulled to himself his worker’s shirt and then his pants. He did this with movements as engrossingly slow and thoughtful as those of a person intent on smoothing out his clothes and laying them on the back of a chair before going to bed. First he fixed the pants. Laying them out before him, he pulled out and straightened the legs. Then he laid the shirt on top of the pants and patted it, and then, not moving from his place, he reached back behind him with one thin arm, scooped up the bread, and rolled it into the clothes. With the bundle in his hand, he stood up.

He could not have been blind, and if he wasn’t he surely saw Dávid on the far shore of the water.

He heaved the bundle over his head, the way we get ready to heave a heavy stone. At the end of a second preparatory swing, he hurled it with all the might of his tense body.

A big dull splash followed, and Dávid involuntarily cried out.

They were about twenty-five meters from each other. At Dávid’s shout, which might even have preceded the splash, their eyes met for the first time. Like two heavy oil stains seeking each other, neither surprise nor excitement disturbed the way their glances blended. The bundle popped to the surface, and while in each other’s attentive eyes they were paying attention to the attentiveness, the shirt and pants floated apart, scattering quickly bursting bubbles around them.

Shirt and pants peeled off each other and lazily, with slow-moving tentacles, sank again.

The bread stayed on the surface for a time.

Even later Dávid could not describe to his grandfather every detail of this strange series of events. With his words, he rearranged the story’s chronology to create the impression that he had neglected ringing the church bell because of a heated battle for the pants and shirt, and therefore that slapping his face had been unfair. With this bold lie he was protecting his secret, which he could not reveal because he had no words with which to share it. And while he hurried behind his agitated grandfather on the shady brick pavement that encircled the house, his grandfather’s blind anger filled him with new and ominous feelings. About the old man being after some sort of bloody revenge, when it was Dávid’s lies that had befogged his judgment.

They both longed for a scapegoat and each of them found one.

He knew exactly what his grandfather wanted to do: to get on his bicycle and, disregarding the spasms of his kidney trouble, ride out to the fields.

There to catch that lunatic by the ear and, if necessary, with a single blow to render him harmless, or to turn him over to the police and take back the pants.

He would never again dare return to that place, which, judging by what had been done to him, was obviously cursed.

But he figured incorrectly, because the pastor was thinking not about the tramp, of whose existence he could not know, but about the retired prison guard who, according to the villagers, spent his days walking around naked on his land.

As it turned out, he did not believe them.

Grandpapa, he whimpered in his agony, in a whiny child’s voice he hadn’t used in years, it’s just a lunatic, he whined as they hurried along the sidewalk.

He wanted to arrest the flow of events — though he also longed for revenge — so that he wouldn’t have to divulge his pagan secrets or admit to lies.

He threw in his own boots and his clothes too, believe me, and probably that’s why he needed my pants. With words like this he tried to get out of his story. He is a madman, believe me, Grandpa, he even threw his bread in the water, he escaped from somewhere.

Mention of the bread caught his grandfather’s attention.

One must be truly a madman or criminal to throw away bread, he thought, but his thick, muscular back did not respond even when he crossed the high threshold of the shed door; reason could not assuage his agitation so quickly. Grabbing the bicycle by its handlebars and seat, with a single motion he lifted it out of the clutter of tools and turned around with it; spades and hoes, shovels and pickaxes thudded and knocked together in the wake of his violent movement.

Dávid stood in the bright opening of the door; the pastor’s wire-rimmed glasses flashed at him sternly from the dimness inside.

Where are your shoes, he asked the boy because he needed time to divert himself from his original goal.

Dávid looked down at his bare feet as if only now discovering the missing sandals; with this, he too meant to gain time, to thwart his grandfather’s revenge.

He didn’t take them. They’re still there.

Which shoes did you have on, the pastor asked sternly.

I wore my sandals today, the boy hastened with the answer.

The pastor rebuked himself unsparingly. Which increased his agitation instead of lessening it. Anyone who at the sight or sound of the slightest trouble lets his mind jump to the most extreme conclusion must face his own criminal character. Nature had endowed the pastor with enormous physical strength, which forced him to be careful with his temper, not to lose it, to nip it in the bud. This habit was not, in the end, alien to his gentle disposition, but it filled him with complacency, and thus did his moral precaution lead him toward the greatest danger lying in wait for him: arrogance. When he yielded to the temptation of complacency, as he frequently did, he committed the mortal sin of arrogance.

He seemed more like a shy man than a stupid one.

With the benefit of his long spiritual experience, he reproached himself most severely; he prayed fervently. But a single remark offending decency, or cursing or swearing or an obscene gesture, sufficed to upset the fastidiously guarded equilibrium of his conscience.

And everyone sensed that something was not right with his conscience; the village too made him feel it. They openly laughed at him when he stood before them, red in the face, having a temper tantrum, driven to the edge of his self-control.

He readily used his physical strength to help people; he rushed to their aid with self-sacrificing zeal, as if to alleviate his shame by doing something, as if to conceal some physical flaw. It was not that these people along the Danube were unfamiliar with the concept of self-sacrifice, but rather that they saw through the trick; the pastor wanted to redeem mercy with caritas. Behind his back they told one another that he behaved like a Catholic. The transgressions of his youth seemed to be presiding over his present efforts. He still desired the woman in Vésztő, whose temptation, so long ago, in his days as an assistant minister, he had been unable to resist. He carried luggage, heavy sacks of anything, he uprooted stubborn stumps with a pickaxe, he moved the bulkiest beams; the peasants took advantage of his gentle humility, at times abused him. And because of his willingness to serve them they did not like him.

One prefers to disdain a person one abuses. They watched him, observed him, spied on him, hoping to figure out what the pastor wanted to achieve with his behavior.

The Christians who live in these parts have never even heard of monastic humility.

Ever since his wife died, and that was more than four years ago, no day passed without his being tortured by the old feeling about that woman from Vésztő. He could not be rid of the scent of that woman’s strong body. He felt as if he were losing the meaning of his life’s entire work, even though he had been truly self-restrained since his wife’s death; he had exiled all selfishness and considered his life as a service to others. No agitation and no hope could shift the heavy apathy that settled oppressively on his heart at times like this and remained there for hours, sometimes days or weeks. What could he do, what could he give, what could he offer as sacrifice, if with the labor of his entire life he had not overcome his most sinful desires. He did not argue with the Lord. One receives God’s mercy or forgiveness not as a reward for one’s deeds. His doubts about Calvinist doctrines of faith and predestination were not based on theological considerations. Rather, he had practical problems with his own life: how to lead others to the point where at least they would not stand in the way of mercy with their evil deeds; how to lead young souls to the command of love when his own body searched for nothing but the physical desires of others.

All right, he has been restraining his body’s desires since then, if one can put it that way.

However, a young soul recognizes no obligations regarding others except those that please that young person’s body.

But doesn’t a young soul follow the divine plan when it satisfies its urges.

He became aware of his naïveté after his wife’s death, when he was past his fiftieth year. Her death took away the faith that had served him steadfastly for decades. He willingly reconciled himself to this, yet he still faced the question, from where would he draw the strength necessary for his calling if not from his faith. He was on his own with his physical urges and no person to attach them to. The practical mind has no general ideas for a man past fifty, so he could serve only himself, whom else, with his remnants of the procreative instinct — and it wasn’t even the instinct of procreation; and he in the name of the Lord Jesus should have been serving the Almighty. His service was, at best, empty fervor turned into self-interest, which stupid people liked to see and which they counted on so as to get something for nothing again. Because of his good deeds people around him became like wild beasts on the lookout for prey. Nothing interested them except their profit; go on, call the pastor, he’ll take care of it. He’ll pull it out, cut it down, uproot it. That pastor is strong as an animal; all you have to do is tell him. The possibility of even the smallest profit made them feverish; what else could be torn or ripped from what. They rolled their eyes frenetically in their eternal, insatiable pleasure. And these characteristics of his, which he recognized in other people, reminded him again of that insane woman of Vésztő with whom, as a young man engaged to be married, he had cheated on his bride.

He saw their disgusting greediness, yet he could not help following them like a calf. He could not do otherwise; he went on serving them.

Since then he knew, from experience, that sin gave much more pleasure than perspicacity or even moral purity.

He was spared a public scandal and his secret was preserved in the village, albeit at the cost of the terrible tragedy: from the moment the crazy woman and her husband drowned in the Tisza in their wagon, along with the horses, he could not free himself from the tormenting thought and agonizing self-accusation that he had caused the fatal accident. Burdened with these thoughts he successfully repelled all temptation, which was not so difficult since the water had taken from him his only beloved woman, the one from Vésztő.

He knew he should not try, but he wanted to understand the divine plan. Or at least he was curious to learn it as a theological guide for life. Ultimately he had been the one who forced, who convinced the woman to undertake that final journey. He had not done so with criminal intent; he wanted to save the little waif from her. He had discovered by accident what she had been doing with the foundling. It was not he the woman loved, he thought; she did not love anyone, she was insane. He came to think that desire burned so brightly in her because she was possessed by the devil. And he too was taken in by the devil. With his own eyes he had had to witness the woman torturing the little foundling with the same passion that she made love to him.

He was making love to a man-eating monster.

If he could not free himself, he wanted to free at least that miserable child; and lo, the fishermen did save her, fished her out of the Tisza. Years later he was still trying to figure out how his and the woman’s sin fitted into the plan of divine providence, and he could not understand it. This meant unceasing struggle for him, and he was unable to forget. His wife’s death had permanently done away with the sources of a naïve religious worldview in him. His body was continuously tortured by the absence of his wife’s body, even though he had never found the insane passion with her that he had with the woman from Vésztő.

At best he would have a few hours’ relief; they both learned a little from each other about what it was like to love a siblinglike being.

He began to have serious doubts about the hereafter; in addition, he was especially tormented by what he had to demand of his body in the name of his vocation or in remaining faithful to what he missed so much.

If only because of his son’s terrible death, he could not have Creation allowing atheists and Communists to be right and materialism to enjoy such primacy. He could not believe there was no hereafter, that there would be no final judgment, that there was no kind of mercy.

He was pursued by extreme anxiety when he returned from the Catholic town on the other side of the river and, after a half-hour walk, with his long strides gained the village’s miserable main square, mute in the heat. He was sweating in his black suit; his prostate, his bladder, and his kidneys were killing him. After all, a pastor can’t just stop by the roadside ditch to relieve himself; anyway, he couldn’t urinate quickly and amply anymore. He really should have stopped often at the edge of the empty road. And if he did not urinate at least a bit, the persistent urge remained in his urethra and bladder, and after a while his kidneys began to burn and shooting pains pierced his back. His bladder tightened unbearably, which in turn produced an urge to defecate.

It was hard to take so much physical punishment all at once.

The women on the steps of the general store, standing there with loaves in hand, were still analyzing the recent event in fine detail, but the delivery truck had long since sped away and the presbyter was back at his place behind the fence.

The suffering pastor could hardly wait to get home. He had to acknowledge his grandson’s negligence as having been his own mistake, and he was in no mood to discuss it with anyone.

His shame and the accumulated poison in his body created bizarre images in his mind.

He had walked down the middle of the road, which definitely testified to openness of character, but the moment he noticed the little crowd of people in front of the store he stepped onto the sidewalk and walked more rapidly in the shade of the morello trees. Let the villagers see that even without them he knew how to deal with such negligence. He greeted them, smiling at each one, and the women returned his greeting as usual, readily, distrustfully, joylessly.

In his heart he despised them for their joylessness.

Every morning he tried to awaken cheerfully, but during the last quarter-century these obdurate pagans on the Danube had rarely reciprocated his smile or laugh. It was impossible to budge them from their gloom even with a word of love.

Luckily he managed this time to avoid talking to them, but he had hardly taken a few steps in the shade when he literally tripped over the presbyter, still busy loosening pickets on his decaying fence.

He asked the presbyter whether he had seen his grandson Dávid.

The thickset, large-eyed, and always rather grubby little man had enough troubles of his own. Why should he keep an eye on the pastor’s shitty grandson too. He had to replace the whole fence, but where would he get new cross-pieces for it, and as if he hadn’t even heard the pastor, he told him about his problem.

Imagine, he shouted, with the nail-ridden piece of wood in his hand poking in the direction of the general store, your reverence won’t believe it, that rotten tramp stole bread right in front of our eyes.

His grandson had stolen bread, no. The pastor’s jaw dropped on hearing this.

And before that, he stole from my cherry trees, what kind of a world do we live in, wasn’t ashamed to steal from us in broad daylight.

Every trace of a smile disappeared from around the pastor’s eyes and he simply watched the words emerging from the presbyter’s toothless mouth.

That is what made the presbyter understand what the pastor had asked him before.

And he quickly answered that no, he hadn’t, how could he have seen Dávid.

Then who stole the bread, asked the pastor, staring at the presbyter even more incredulously.

Some tramp, a pox on him, the presbyter continued to rave. How did he get the nerve, to eat sour cherries off his tree right in front of him. He can’t stomach it.

They stared into each other’s eyes.

Well, your reverence, that’s what we’ve come to, I’m telling you, this is the kind of world we live in.

The ferrymen told me he didn’t ring the bell, the pastor continued hesitantly.

The presbyter knitted his shaggy old-mannish brows.

You say he didn’t ring the bell, he shouted stupidly, but why wouldn’t he, he mumbled very slowly and haltingly, drawing out his words along with his sluggish thoughts, trying to backpedal a bit.

Bells were ringing in his ears, but he could not decide if it had been at noon the day before when he had heard them last.

The pastor’s experience was that the brains of people on the Danube were even slower than those of people on the Tisza.

Could it have been at dawn, he mumbled to himself. His effort to remember took longer than the pastor’s bladder could endure.

Well then, God be with you, he muttered so he could at last be on his way.

Nevertheless, a mere half hour later they were riding their bicycles together out of the village.

The dirt road would take them a little away from Balter’s property, yet Balter thought they were headed toward his place. They jumped off their bicycles, hastily threw them to the side, and walked in his direction, agitated and threatening.

The moment he saw them he meant to put on his shirt, which would have been the decent thing to do, but he didn’t. As if he had lost his presence of mind. The first thing that came into his head was that his wife had died.

During hot summer days, the dry sand along the Danube draws out a person’s steps, and anyone walking in that sand seems to be making progress more slowly than he actually is, rising and sinking a bit. Here come the messengers, Balter thought anxiously, counting heavily on news of his wife’s death.

Then he’d move back to town to escape the damned horseflies.

He had witnessed many deaths and concluded that death behaved unpredictably even when it came about as a result of human violence. If, for example, a tube is shoved down someone’s throat or someone is beaten mercilessly, the people doing such things must count on the person’s possible death, though it’s not inevitable, since artificial feeding and even the bloodiest beating can be survived, depending on the victim. And yet death can appear with a single jolt. Or after the very first blow, even though no one intended it. He had witnessed it so many times, from close up and from far away, that when he saw the messengers he could only think that here it was again.

For decades he had wanted nothing but his wife’s speedy death.

The two men were approaching quickly on the marshy footpath that led straight to the apricot tree. Balter, holding his shirt in his hand, did not move for several moments. A large-bodied bespectacled man was in front, in a white shirt and black pants rolled up above his ankles; in build and age he resembled Balter, and he almost covered up the little man galloping behind him. The little man wore a black hat in the heat and kept waving a picket in rhythm with his hastening steps. When they came within hearing distance, still treading on the soft sand, they both shouted greetings, which Balter acknowledged but, because of the surprised waiting, was not in a position to return.

Seeing him mute and motionless, the two men slowed and, after a few involuntary steps, halted, uncertain.

Shouting from his spot, the larger man asked whether Balter had seen a tramp in the area.

Balter felt that a very long time passed before he understood the question, and he could signal only with a shaking of the head that no, he had not.

But this apparently long time did not remain empty; a great many things happened during it.

The bespectacled man’s wild look settled mainly on Balter’s pants. First, he looked over the lower parts, then, a bit embarrassed, his eyes glided past the groin area and up to Balter’s deep chest, as if to gauge its size and strength should he have to fight the man. As if Balter were the tramp they were looking for so hard. Or as if a similar, even more impossible assumption were making the air vibrate around them. Suspicion and blame: these two were suspecting him of something. Given their physical attributes and age, a fight between them would not have been uninteresting. The pastor’s wrath restrained by his moral stance, and the jailer’s cool competence based on much experience; the pastor’s short temper and his strength refined by spirituality, and the jailer’s raw strength and inexperience in spirituality — these made for measurable differences that rendered the outcome unpredictable. And they weren’t in it alone, face-to-face; there was the third unpredictable man too.

Realizing this, Balter’s eyes moved to the picket the smaller man was holding in his hand.

Balter’s realization could not have escaped the pastor’s attention.

The pastor’s suspicion and urge to find blame persisted, but there also arose in him a vehement wish to revoke them. He had no means to do this but by staying at a respectable distance and repeating his question, this time more gently, whether Balter really hadn’t seen anyone suspicious around.

He got no answer this time either.

One can’t engage in complicated explanations when shouting, anyway. He continued to gesticulate and yell as if trying to make himself understood by a retarded person. Which once again fired up his words.

It was impossible not to hear his disdain for slow-witted people.

There was a boy here earlier, in bathing trunks. That’s his grandson. And this tramp must have gone by here too. So why does he say he hasn’t seen either of them, he shouldn’t go on saying that.

Balter shook his head to indicate he had not, and kept looking at the picket.

Two nails were sticking out from one end of it.

How could he not see someone prowling about. Why wouldn’t he help.

Even if he asks the same thing three times, the answer is still no. I didn’t see anybody, I’m telling you.

Well then, you’d better take good care of yourself, the pastor shouted, and keep your eyes peeled, though it was not clear whether Balter should be wary of the two men or of the tramp they were looking for.

They turned around, plodding back on the sand again for a good distance, and picked up their bicycles practically on the run.

Balter slowly lowered his shoulders, which made him feel the shirt in his hand; slowly he put it on. He watched indignantly as the two men were swallowed up by the low-lying dirt road.

When they disappeared he looked furtively around his garden and took off for his house. As if expecting that the sight of well-tended plants would reassure him that it was nothing, everything was all right, peace still reigned.

In this peaceful state, noisy with the rushing of blood and the buzzing of bees, he saw that the cabbages were nicely acquiring their round shape and the potato stems were beginning to dry in their evenly filled rows. Tied to their stakes, heavy green tomatoes in tight, darkly fragrant bunches were getting ready to turn red in a few days; looking at it all, he felt an aversion bordering on disgust. His plot of land had a very good exposure, the soil was favorable because it rested mainly on former tideland, and the barren sand hills, which the low-lying dirt road sliced in half, blocked the wild winds, absorbed the fire of the sunshine, and after sundown poured out the accumulated heat. He had to grab something quickly, anything. He went about his business as he did on any other day.

But he was seized by an urge to escape. To lock up his house and vanish in the fields. The air was coming to life; a merciless struggle was taking place in the heart of his peace.

He could no longer find his bearings.

All right, his wife hadn’t died, but his senses hadn’t tricked him completely. Somebody had been lurking for weeks. Tramp, they call his son now. And if they only knew what sort of scoundrel he really was. At the same time he couldn’t wholly disregard his supposition regarding his damn wife’s sudden death.

Why can’t he evict her from his heart; why can’t he forget her forever.

His dead mother was also shouting into his thoughts, though she was usually soft-spoken.

He grabbed a round wicker basket that he had filled with string beans early that morning. The midday heat and nervous fever conspiring against him had accomplished their mission. The beans were particularly beautiful, long, butter-yellow, and tender. The richness of his garden was due partly to the high level of the groundwater and partly to the basin behind the sand dunes, chiseled to barrenness, which filled with thick vapor all night long and sometimes even in the morning.

There were several varieties of harmful pests, but nothing ever dried out, not even in the worst heat waves. He took the basket inside and dropped it on the floor.

The house, built of planed wood, had two small areas, one room and a kitchen; a small alcove opened from the kitchen, no larger than a closet, which he used as a pantry. He tore open the pantry door. Of course, he found no one behind it. Empty bottles and jars of preserved fruit lined the shelves, strawberry, currant, and gooseberry; he was particularly proud of these. In the stifling dimness the cellophane covers on the jars were tight as drums.

This was about the time he usually prepared his lunch; and he wanted to put up the string beans for winter while they were still fresh.

He could not find his small knife.

Military order reigned in his new house. Everything was bare and cheerless. As if a putrid belch had come up into his mouth from a queasy stomach, he cursed the disorder and filth he found here but blamed not himself but a third person for everything, including the missing knife he could not find. He saw the furniture and other objects as dusty, downright grimy.

They stole my little knife, he said to himself. He saw that the fingers of his strong hands were filthy; crescent moons of thick dirt sat under each nail.

Everyone but he would have seen these objects as clean, if a bit worn. He had collected them from various places over many years.

The small knife he was looking for now, for example, he had stolen from his own house in Budapest.

To free himself of the humiliation, he tore the shirt off his body.

But he no longer wished for calm and he did not think he had gone mad either.

The sound of his every movement was as if somebody or something else had produced it. A prowling wild beast or the murderer spying on him. He tore open the door to the room, and its dusty emptiness hit him like a blow. There was the strictly made-up bed; a draft ruffled the faded linen curtain on the sunny window.

He threw his pants on the bed; they landed with the legs spread.

His mother cried out in his ears.

This is not right for you, my son.

In his drenched apron, leaning against the wooden washtub, he held the scrub brush in his hand, puffy from lye; not right for you, not right for you, son. Of course it wasn’t right for him, but how in hell would his mother know what was right for him.

He chucked his underpants in the pile of clothes to be washed. He earnestly sought his lost calm in his nakedness, but for that he should have removed the weight of his body from his soul.

You really think, Mother, that you will tell me what’s right for me.

And when he finally got the big knife in his hand, because the damned little one hadn’t turned up, he gripped it as if he were getting ready to kill. He never wanted to keep animals, to avoid the need to kill them. He had seen too much human blood not to dread the sight of killing. He faced the simple task of cleaning and chopping the string beans, but what occurred to him was that he had never beaten a prisoner of his own free will. He was not quite clear about whose question he was answering this way, nor could he deny that at times he had had no choice but to dish out a few necessary blows. Why on earth did he have to excuse himself now, and to whom. Rebellious prisoners would bang on the cell doors or kick them with the tips or metal heels of their boots; others would make a racket on the ribs of radiators.

Of course he had to dish out some blows; how could he avoid it.

On the Visegrád shore, tipcarts at the distant mine were creaking, making their usual steady noise.

It was late afternoon; the heat let up a little.

They will creak all night; they will keep on creaking in the eternity of sin. And all those fantasies, sensations, visions, and desires that during the past months had settled into fine grooves or drawn furrows on the rim of his receding consciousness, were now hatching, returning, reviving, and cunningly going on the attack. In the parched heat’s heavy vapor and reddish trembling dust, the sun was preparing to take its leave, far beyond the distant mountains. One could still not say, though, that he had thought over his oppressive life, or perhaps his sins, or anything else. He was hurt and afraid, inkling gave birth to memory, memory begat images, and he was being helplessly tossed about among them.

In the meantime the wax beans, locked in liter jars and wrapped in cloth, were now properly steaming in a large pot on the stove. But his feverish activity had not eased his nervous tension. His naked body was becoming sweaty and stained, and when he thought about going to bathe soon, he did not mean cooling off his body. Later, he took soap, found a clean shirt, unhooked a towel, and threw it over his shoulder along with a clean shirt and pants. He turned off the gas stove, giving the tap to the container an extra twist. He walked out of the house, carefully locked the door, and was about to hide the key at its usual place, under the large stone with which his son would one day bash his head in if he weren’t careful, when he was violently shaken by a mute shadow he detected at the edge of his vision; he shuddered, and on his back and chest the muscles froze into veritable knots.

The pastor was standing motionless under the apricot tree.

When he had come by earlier, he’d shouted good evening very respectfully and then had stopped when he heard dull, harmless noises filtering from the little house. He did not intend to surprise the other man.

Now, he quickly, almost stuttering, begged Balter’s pardon.

But meanwhile his eyes roved over the other man’s naked body, from his neck to his loins, and more thoroughly than they had at midday.

What in God’s name are you looking for, shouted a surprised Balter, what do you want on my property again.

Of course he meant not his property but his uncovered loins, by which men measure each other’s abilities.

All the pastor could do was not look at Balter’s naked body; he looked straight into his eyes.

Which only deepened the embarrassing feeling in both men of male defenselessness and vulnerability. Because it is forbidden to look at what arouses their curiosity.

It was especially painful for the pastor that because of his careless glances their conversation had begun with blasphemous swearing.

He really did not mean to catch him by surprise, the pastor said quietly, please forgive his coming back uninvited, but frankly, he could not rest because of his crude way of talking earlier that day.

He would like to apologize.

Frankly, that is the reason he came back.

Balter did not care for this kind of weakness, that a person should have to apologize for having used abusive language, and therefore he did not believe the pastor. He just looked hard at him, wondering what he really wanted.

You don’t say, he replied roughly, so you’d be that famously strong priest, he said aggressively, though more softly than before.

The pastor responded with the shy smile of a truly strong person, you’ve got it, that’s me.

Now, don’t go thinking I scare easy.

Frankly I don’t.

I already saw at noon, don’t you worry, that you were just a priest or something, Balter continued.

I am a pastor, the other man corrected him quietly.

I’m not blind, I see what I see, but don’t worry, I’m not interested in your business. You can be a priest for all I care. I’m not interested in God anyway.

His voice, the hard edge of his words, kept him from being at one with what his face was projecting.

People also say about you that you like chopping wood better than preaching, and they like you better that way, with the axe.

His smile now was the kind a pleasant memory produces.

But then what do you do with that son-of-a-bitch God of yours.

Suddenly the afternoon’s nightmare ended for him. He felt that with his involuntary smile he was back in his element, and so he continued what he had started.

Don’t for a minute think I’m scared of any kind of god or priest or parson. You can bet your ass on that. For all I care you could be Miklós Toldi* or Hercules himself, you’d better believe it.

I gladly believe it, I assure you, the pastor responded, and despite Balter’s nakedness he stepped closer. But the other man’s every word had hurt him. I don’t want to lie, but looking at you, I don’t think I’m a match for your physical strength.

This created a long silence between the two of them.

Balter wasn’t sure whether the pastor was mocking him. Those three phrases—gladly believe it, looking at you, and physical strength—affected him as if they had been blows. As if they were foreign words. He suspected the learned man was dressing him down for his ignorance, was making fun of him, had nothing but contempt for him. And the pastor weighed the likelihood that Balter might try to hit him, given how close they were, but he feared not for himself, only for his glasses.

The glasses were new; the lenses had to be made to order, specially, by the optician.

Nonetheless, with his wide smiling blue eyes behind those glasses he charmed the other man.

If one lives for a long time without feeling any physical and spiritual friendship, even the germs of feeling tend to petrify.

At that moment, unexpectedly even for himself, Balter slipped the key under the stone.

I always put it here when I leave the house, he said quickly, as if he didn’t himself know why he was giving away his most precious secret. Since you’ve seen it anyway I might as well tell you, he said by way of explanation. Anyway, it’s better to have someone else know about it, one never knows what might happen.

He put the soap down on the step, hung his shirt and towel on the door handle, and then with leisurely motions slipped his legs into his pants. The leisureliness was part of his fraternal feeling.

As a young man he had had a friend, and the two of them would have jumped into fire for each other; in the army too he had had a bosom buddy. But not since then.

He had to pull hard on his leather belt because he’d lost a lot of weight over the past few months.

He goes down to the river to bathe every night, he said as he buttoned up, and looked again at the pastor, withdrawn behind his indulgent, shy smile.

If you don’t think it impertinent, frankly I’d like to go with you.

The suggestion hit Balter like another real blow. He looked at the pastor; was he mocking him. Gentlemen say things like that to ladies, I’d like to go with you. With a certain leisureliness and sluggishness, he weighed whether to hit the man.

Above the sizzling landscape the cloudless evening sky was flaming red.

You know, at this hour in the evening, the pastor explained, when it’s not so hot anymore, frankly I usually go for a walk anyway.

They started out under the flaming sky, walking side by side for a while on the footpath.

So, did they find the tramp they were looking for so hard.

It’s better that they didn’t. You see, cried the pastor bluntly, one has to admit, frankly, that the good Lord has once again made things turn out more wisely.

The way he saw it, the authorities would have fixed the scoundrel’s wagon for sure if they had found him.

The two men’s voices sounded identical in the flaming air. No voice should rise above the silence of the landscape, neither of them should hurt the other.

By the grace of Jesus Christ they steered clear of the sin of hitting anyone, the pastor told Balter warmly, as if he were initiating him into jealously guarded secrets of Creation. Because he realized they both had much base feeling in them, he didn’t deny it, and wouldn’t care to lie. Frankly, they had wanted to retrieve his grandson’s pants and the miserable creature had stolen bread from the store too. Whether one likes it or not, there’s a murderous instinct in man.

Many damned scoundrels roam all over the world, answered Balter in his own way, very courteously. I should know, you can believe me. I’ve got experience in things like this.

The pastor really didn’t want to upset their fresh understanding, but it was hard to relinquish his missionary intentions.

Without Providence, we are all ignorant children, little children. In our great ignorance we are all sinners.

With cautious glances they measured the effect of their words on each other.

Balter had put up with party seminars and propaganda meetings more easily than with such missionary texts; at political rallies he had listened repeatedly to the theory that only a few more years of hard work were needed to lay the final foundations of socialism. With patience, perseverance, and mainly great vigilance, because the enemy, both without and within, lurked everywhere. He did not believe a word of it, and he knew what the game was really all about. If they put a communist and a fascist in the same cell, and they did, what the hell did they talk about. But the pastor’s words filled him with some primeval passion.

A dead furrow led them across the abandoned orchard where Balter had not had time to fix the devastation.

He did not believe in any kind of providence, and if it was spoken about in such unctuous tones, he preferred to take revenge by swearing. At the mention of communism or fascism he shrugged his shoulders, but the orchard interested him more than providence. What he thought was, a plague and a pox on your comrades, not me, but if things stay as they are and the old lords can’t come back, that’s all right with me too.

Everyone has a mother, that’s what I say, a baron also shits.

When they reached the boundary of Balter’s fertile land near the shore, clearly marked by stakes, they had to continue in single file through a thicket, its soil soft with silt, until they reached the willows by the river.

Balter went in front, the pastor walked behind him.

The pungent vapors of decaying plants pervaded the air.

The water level had dropped to the deep part of the riverbed during these dry months.

The shore was steep.

As if showing off the splendors of his property, Balter led the pastor to a lovely glade in the willows where, standing side by side, they could watch the landscape reveal the powerful sweep of the river and the bare line of the far shore in the reddish vapor of twilight.

So that’s where you used to work, I heard in the village, the pastor said after a long time.

There it lay, at the northern edge of the small cathedral town of many churches, a shape alien to the landscape and to the water, the old block of the baroque penal institution, with its pointed watchtowers and thick brick walls.

No matter where one looked, one couldn’t help seeing those walls; to live close to them and twice a week to preach the word of God there and give testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ — there was no greater ordeal in the pastor’s life.

For thirty years I served there, that’s right, Balter replied quietly, almost bashfully, as if he had heard the dread in the pastor’s voice. He laughed a little. I began under the rule of His Excellency the regent, if you know who I mean, your reverence, then I served our father Rákosi and I swore allegiance to Kádár too.*

I have been doing my service for thirty years also, said the pastor. His tone was more resigned than it had been before.

The other man mustn’t sense too much of the immeasurable difference between the two. Maybe a little. But the pastor thought it wouldn’t be right to miss a chance to testify to his own long service, if only in a modest way. As things were, the distance between them had grown too wide. Because of the testimony he had to give to Christ, the desire for merciless revenge only deepened in the pastor.

And so as not to emphasize the various enormous distances between them while they stood so closely together, he didn’t look at the other man for a long time.

No matter how true it was that he had devoted his vocation to following Christ, he had to take his bloody revenge on someone. He could not avoid the feeling and the compulsion stemming from it.

It was January when I got married, Balter related with charming innocence, I took my oath of service in February, and in February of this year I completed my service. Believe me, it was enough.

We moved here in the month of July from the Tisza, which is where I had my first position — ten years at Tiszavésztő, if you know where that is. That’s how I’ve been spending my service, said the pastor indulgently.

Despite his good intentions the different nature of their services could not be equalized. Or perhaps it could have been if he had eked out of himself a little more goodwill, but then what would he have done about the fate of his only son and his own dark hatred. At best they were equal in age and in the unstoppable rhythm of mortality, which they both had to face.

Still, their long silence did not become unpleasant, since they both were interested more in the intention of what they said than in its literal meaning.

Whatever happened to them before now, they were both on the way out of their lives.

And now I am free, Balter said cautiously.

Which had roughly the effect it would have had if he were a small child who for the first time said something dreadfully indecent out loud. But coming from an old man, the statement had a certain irony. And in the ensuing silence the pastor heard well the sigh escaping from the other man’s heavy body, and then the silence that led to the next sentence.

They were hard years, to be sure, who had it easy. Thus did the pastor go around the problematical subject. Frankly, we shall all make our accounting before the just Lord.

How many things one has to live through during one’s service, replied Balter, equally indulgent. One could go on talking about it until tomorrow morning, but he fell silent quickly, as if he had given himself away with his own unguarded words.

He had much to be silent about. Before he left his job, he had had to reconfirm both his verbal and written oaths to keep his silence.

People say you are alone, is your dear wife no longer alive, if I may ask frankly, said the pastor deliberately but cautiously, as if at the moment when the other opened up he wanted to reach even further into the darkness. But in fact he was thinking about his own fate.

If you only knew how much my old lady is still alive and living her own life, if I may put it that way, Balter replied. It’s not the kind of life you’d understand, he said, and his voice reverberated with a hatred for educated people that he’d accumulated over many decades and which felt at this moment just like the hatred he felt for his wife and son.

Though my wife wasn’t a regular whore, no worry about that.

It was probably his surprise at opening up like this that made his reply come out so coarsely.

I must say, though, to be frank with you, she wasn’t much better. So why shouldn’t she live her own life, he added with an unpleasantly grating laugh. I couldn’t care less.

That is how, at that moment, the ignominy of the two men’s fate became entwined.

They glanced at each other in their mutual shame, as if they had no way to avoid this common ignominy. They could not have been more different; nothing bound them together but their age; and they saw nothing in each other’s eyes but that they were both men.

The first word was lacking.

In the pastor, the lack of a daily dose of good had become so acute that he could make no room for more evil. He asked no more questions, didn’t want to turn more of the man’s evil on himself. When he heard Balter’s indecent laugh, apathy settled into his heart, the most dangerous kind of apathy.

Balter suspected rigid rejection and hard moral judgment behind the spectacles. What more could he expect from such a powerful man. His superiority shrank, now consisting only of the fact that his wife was indeed alive. He could have done nothing with the other man except, in anger about his own fate, knock him out.

Yet the other man’s mute sorrow pierced his self-esteem as a pin would a balloon.

He almost cried out in the evening silence.

My wife waited for me, sir, ambushed me with a sack, and my only son beat me until I was bloody. If you want to know how they did it, I’ll be happy to tell you. With the poker. They broke four of my ribs, he cried, and seeing the effect of his words on the pastor’s face, he added something that sounded truly strange.

If I don’t get killed, I’ll have to kill my potential killer.

The water carried his voice on its whirling surface, and from the reddish shore of Vác an echo returned it.

It could not be determined whether he was referring to his wife or his son. They went on trying to gauge in each other’s eyes what might happen next.

Not for anything in the world would he tell the pastor more serious things about his son, though he had much to tell.

The water was lapping the sand gently in front of them, and if the two men did not go at each other it was because of the heart-numbing apathy that had somewhat tamed the pastor’s murderous impulse. Bats flew over their heads and the screeching of nocturnal birds was heard from among the willows. When the pastor finally spoke again, only the Creator might have known what nonsense he was going to come up with.

It’s been four full years since my poor dear wife, my sweet little Emmi, my one and only died. This was his dulled, pained response, and he almost broke down in the middle of it; while he struggled for words and for air with his trembling lips, he had the feeling that with every word he should bow to the ground.

He wanted to throw light on the other man’s fate with his own.

The disgrace of the uttered words instantly disgraced his dead.

His dull cry of pain had no echo.

Even after so many decades, he could not predict what a man locked hermetically in his will and physical strength might do with his feelings. Neither of them failed to notice that in the interval of their struggle with these blind emotions, the searchlights on the prison watchtowers had been turned on. The beams bore through the twilight; the harsh light spread and stretched out over the water.

Reflected light fell on Balter’s eyes and on the pastor’s glasses.

My dear son, my only one, like a common criminal, like a dog, he continued, crying out in his pain even more dully, they threw him into an unmarked grave, you must know who they were, I don’t know anything, nothing, they shot him or hanged him.

Without tearing himself away from Balter’s shining face, he jerked his head toward the other shore.

It’s true. Not where you worked but in the terrible prison on Kozma Street,* at least that’s what one supposes. This much I had to tell you.

He managed to unload this portion of his rage and then retrieve some of it with his explanation.

Balter had to take his eyes off the tormented man, though his professional curiosity was immediately aroused to know during which political wave the death sentence might have been issued. He had little doubt it had to do with 1956. To place the case correctly in the chronology, all he had to do was to look at the pastor and gauge the quality of his agitation with his sense organs. He could endure his own defeat only if he unilaterally relinquished their fellowship, which until a moment ago he had strongly expected the pastor would do. War criminals and relatives of Arrow Cross men behaved humbly; they could not afford such outbursts. And the debased and humiliated relatives of communists lacked anger and hatred, and they never gave up their rebellious, haughty conviction in the rectitude of their cause. Balter yanked his shirt and towel off his shoulder and slapped them down on the cracked silt; before the other man could try to stop him he undid his belt and shed his pants in a single vehement movement.

As if denying his decency, he stepped out of his pants and started for the thin stream at the center of the riverbed. As if with this majestic gesture he was telling the pastor that their audience had ended.

Before he could comprehend the other man’s nakedness, offered up as prey, the pastor quickly turned aside and without a word began to walk away. Not to see the other man’s genitals again; he did not wish himself so great a humiliation. And when he was certain he could see nothing of the man but his shadow in the light hovering on the water, he stopped and very loudly called back.

May God bless you, then.

Hearing his words echo from the other shore, from the episcopal see and from the heavy reddish brick walls of the prison, he knew his request for a blessing was in fact a curse.

By then Balter was in the water up to his knees, slapping some on his chest and shoulder before dipping his whole body in.

Driven once more by the zeal of correction, the pastor began.

May the Lord watch over you, guide your every step. That is what I shall ask him to do.

Again his voice came back to him as a threat; his apology to the other man was in vain, and in vain would he pray for the immense mercy of forgiveness.

There is no forgiveness.

The first ripe apricot fell off the tree in the middle of Balter’s garden just after midnight. It fell from somewhere near the top of the tree, hitting and grazing branches in its fall, and the first thud, which awakened Balter, was quickly followed by others.

Dávid slept peacefully that night, though he usually tossed, talked, and shouted in his sleep, or even walked around the dark rooms of the parsonage as if he were awake. His older sister and grandfather had to be on the lookout, though in the one-story house he could not harm himself as he might in the apartment in Budapest, where he also sleepwalked.

But in the morning Balter did not find fallen apricots under the tree. He stared at the ground dumbfounded. Of course, in the shade of the wide-crowned tree and on this sandy rise grass grew very sparsely. He kept looking but did not find any fruit under the outermost branches either. He hadn’t bothered to separate the sounds and sights of his dreams from those of his wakefulness, or perhaps to look for some connection between them. He quickly deflected his thoughts from this issue; some animal must have taken them, he said to himself, he only dreamed of hearing them fall; and he went about his business.

But he knew of no animal that would take or eat ripe apricots.

At noon, when the horseflies arrived and he was cooling himself under the tree, as was his wont, another few ripe apricots fell to the ground.

As some sort of last warning.

He looked at their soft flesh against the sandy-gray ground, but did not touch them. Later, after the last ring of the midday bells, he stood up to put on his shirt. But he couldn’t find it on the sunny branch where he had hung it a short hour earlier. He was amazed. He looked at the empty branch for a long time, then went into the house but did not find the shirt there either.

As if the landscape, dizzy with the midday heat, denied every answer dictated by common sense.

Of course, eventually he’d have to assess what was happening to him here.

He sat on his only chair in the room and forgot about his lunch. If I can’t find it now, he excused himself, I’ll find it later. A weak breeze barely moved the air. The wind couldn’t have carried away my faded old shirt, the earth couldn’t have swallowed it. That was the sum of his assessment. Anxiety and fear, which at other times might have quickly weakened him, did not recur today. Today he was not confronted with an imaginary danger; for the first time destiny had sent palpable signs to him. Now he was sure that apricots had fallen from the tree during the night, no matter how often he tried to defend his memory by calling it a dream. Nor did he doubt that he had spread his wet shirt out on the same sun-beaten branch today as always. In response to these ominous signs, he entrusted himself to his own calm nature; he seemed to know exactly what to expect of those signs.

The pastor’s appearance the evening before was part of the world’s order being cleansed.

For the end of his life he was left by himself; he had nobody and no longer could have anybody. Everyone was at a different place in their lives. When he’d dipped his body into the water last evening every illusion and pain had ended. For him life had no individual condition beyond its historical conditions, and he couldn’t think about mystical or metaphysical conditions. All that sort of thing was the business of women or priests. He had served whom he served, retired, and remained as alone as he had been all his life. He and that pastor had nothing in common; anyway, he disliked priests no matter what kind. No one had anything to do with anyone. He was glad he didn’t even want a mistress for himself anymore.

Just as, at the beginning of his life, he’d thought he’d have something to do with every woman, with any woman at any time.

At most he’ll have to get used to ghosts from his previous life still coming back to tease him.

He continued to trust his steadfast strength. All his life he looked down on men who from birth did not have real physical strength. He didn’t know what to do with men like that.

Images replaced memories; apparitions warning of danger stepped out of the images. These belonged among the inexplicable things a man didn’t bother with. His dead mother held one end of a chain made of these signals; he sat at the other end, content with his mental peace, his big limbs relaxed. His conversation with the pastor had warned him that at the worst someone might appear around his house at any time to take revenge on him. The prowling tramp could be none other than his own son. Just as his mother had sent the young female with his lunch, the woman who would have gladly cooked and washed for him, but whom he hadn’t wanted.

His thoughts about these secret connections were suddenly validated in the air by the unexpected tolling of the church bell.

The fiendishly unexpected sound shook his body, and his muscles jerked, just like the previous evening when he’d noticed the pastor’s motionless shadow under the apricot tree.

It must be close to two o’clock by now.

He was ashamed of a reaction like that; he was no fragile little woman.

The small bell was ringing in the village. The tolling let everyone know that someone had departed from the world of the living.

Even as a child he hadn’t understood why churchmen did not ring the bell the moment they first learned of a death or when they saw it with their own eyes because they’d been at the deathbed.

But they always waited with the bell until the full hour.

Hearing the knell, he stood up; he laughed in joy.

Though he couldn’t have said what gave him joy or why he laughed.

He was no longer free, but he had nothing to do with anyone, not with the dead either. The life and death of unknown people meant nothing. For the sake of his fellow workers he’d always had to pretend a little that life and death meant something to him. He did not go out of his house; with his restless soul he assessed the landscape. He was agitated because he no longer had to do anything for anyone’s sake. Nothing stirred anywhere, but he could not let himself be taken in by illusions that others had created. After the last death knell, he heard no unusual sounds. With his sharp gaze, he looked up and down the footpaths and between the more distant flower beds and vegetable patches. He saw trodden clumps, pressed-down blades of grass, traces of careful footprints. They could have been old, or new, or even the stranger’s. He had two rakes; the one with the finer tines would serve his purpose better. I’ll have my lunch in the evening, he said to himself as if no longer bound by the body’s or time’s simpler needs. From the four stakes marking his boundaries, he would progress toward the house with the rake. If I don’t finish it today, I will tomorrow. He was taking no chances, not because he considered either the size or impossibility of the job, but because he was thinking of the footprints he would obliterate. Occasionally the rake was caught in a clump of grass or cut too deep with its tines. He carefully smoothed over the indentations that might help with the deception. He wanted to see his situation as clearly as possible, and he had no other method for it but this one.

He spent some time under the tree; ignoring the heat and horseflies, he carefully worked around the fallen apricots, which flies and ants had meanwhile chewed and nibbled at.

Still, in the bubble of thick silence, he was not completely satisfied. Something he could not name was bothering him. Until he realized that he had to mark the place where each apricot fell.

He drew circles around them.

By the time he finished raking the entire area, much sooner than he had hoped, it was a red twilight again. He reached back from the threshold to sweep away his last footprint. Not an inch of his land remained without the fine traces of the rake. Thick silence sat over the landscape. He wolfed down some bread, scallions, and dry salami, but he found no drinking water in any of the cans.

He decided not to go to the village for water. But listening to the booming in his ear of dangerously thickening blood, he was not alone in his thirsty vigil that night.

From the willows, he heard the tawny owl, whose sound is like someone dripping water on the surface of motionless water.

Occasionally a ripe apricot fell to the ground.

He could not keep an eye on everything from the door of his house or from the window of his small room. Because of the grapevines and the larger plum and morello trees, he could not see the lower-lying areas. Darkness made his ears the keepers of his attention.

A little later the moon’s pale-yellow waning crescent rose, but it only increased the chaotic picture before his eyes. He could not see into the depths of the long shadows. By midnight the air cooled off and mist covered most things, though the starry sky remained clear and the moon glowed blue in it. He took a firefly for an approaching lamp.

Nothing else happened during that beautiful night.

He had had enough experience in keeping awake.

Some prisoners screamed in their sleep; a good guard could not relax his vigilance, because this was when their charges would go for the pitcher, which meant to be fucked in the ass, or possibly get killed.

On this thirsty night, he remembered for the first time the first night of his marriage.

But he did not keep his mind on it and failed to notice the direction in which his thoughts were straying. As if he had found the source of his life’s bitterness. He looked at what the two of them were doing to each other, but before he could become fully absorbed in his terrible shame, he had to think of his desirable sister-in-law, of course. When for the first time they were finally alone in the kitchen of the super’s apartment on the mezzanine floor on Teréz Boulevard. Because of the heavy downpour he did not have to worry about anyone.

At the very same time, Dávid was lying on his stomach under a light blanket, knees pulled up, and had just opened his eyes in his dark room. Through cracks in the closed shutters, cold light entered in loose stripes. He saw a high, plowed autumn field in the wrinkled rug. He was listening to the rhythmic airy music of crickets and to the tipcarts’ hollow creaking in the distant quarry.

The cavernous easy chair stood in the middle of the freshly plowed meadow.

Protruding from beneath the shadows of his clothes strewn on the chair, the arching armrest was like a raised fist of a hand bent at the wrist. He knew he was seeing the armrest, yet he seemed to feel the eyes of the invisible human figure sitting in the chair.

A shudder glided across the surface of his skin but he could not move.

A man’s resting arm was attached to the apparition’s fist, and a strong shoulder to the arm. Dávid raised his pelvis a little to ease the pressure on his bladder. He should go to the toilet. But in this condition he could not entrust the sight of his body to the eyes of the ghostly figure.

The first thing that occurred to Balter was that the woman was undressing by the chair, which had been kicked aside. While, in fact, he was trying to figure out which of his moves he should change on this most painful wedding night to keep from ruining his marriage forever.

He began to ruminate on this, for the first time in his life, yet what he was seeing was his sister-in-law taking off her bloomers and later letting her skirt down. Which Balter thought was heartrending, and in his brain the blood simply stopped moving; he nearly lost his self-control. This wily woman was curving her back so as to offer the least surface of her skin to the yellowish light. Only then did she lift over her head the pink satin slip glittering wildly in the light. Her big firm ass slipped out from under it, followed by her undulating spine.

As though the big slut was struggling with her meager feminine modesty.

He also remembered the bones sticking out of the half-eaten aspic on the plates.

Gyula, stop gobbling up Imre’s aspic.

She was yakking too as she took off her clothes, as if she had been his mistress for twenty years.

But I will, dearest Aranka, I won’t leave a single mouthful for Imre, you can be sure.

She didn’t wear a garter belt but elastic stockings, the kind old women wore.

All I’m saying is leave him a plateful, that’s all.

Not only will I leave nothing for him, I’ll chew, look, everything off the tiniest little bones too.

The woman stuck two fingers under the elastic while with showy bashfulness she pressed her thighs together.

You’re doing that so I can’t see your pussy, eh, Balter yelled at her from the table, his mouth full. But he continued to chew and to tear off more bread.

The woman did not reply but with her hands and arms kept stroking her long curly pubic hair to keep him from seeing her pussy, which he wanted to see so badly his brain nearly exploded with his boiling blood.

Then for the sake of your mother’s ass, at least eat it properly, with the marinated onion. You shouldn’t leave him any of that either.

Balter was panting as he inhaled her powerful smell pervading the kitchen.

I’ll take a look at yours, don’t you worry, I will, for the sake of your mother’s good goddamn lord, he yelled at her, and his body kept swelling from the urge to take his revenge. I’ll surely fuck this one, he thought.

Meanwhile, though, he did not leave the aspic tray.

They both had been drunk for quite a while and he wanted to sober up a bit so he could fuck her with a cool head.

Then he asked her was she ashamed, seeing how she kept hiding her thighs.

Or maybe he asked her that before.

He remembered that in response to his question the woman shook her freshly curled dyed blond mane as a horse would when breaking into a full gallop. She looked back at him sharply, her teeth flashing as she laughed, and then slapped her foot on the chair, which made the ample flesh of her thigh tremble. Leaning on the chair with all the weight of her compact body, as though not caring about the man at all, she rolled the elastic stocking down to her ankle. The movement meant, who the hell would feel ashamed in front of you. The moment she reached her ankle, her breasts with their swollen nipples swung forward from under her arms and the enormous apple of her bottom opened.

The silence became thick indeed and remained so for the rest of the night.

At least there were some cells from which a heavier silence emanated, where they were preparing to do something or were already doing it, though not every activity was to be noticed. No prison guard strictly observed all the house regulations in every case. After all, one has one’s own interests; a prison guard is also a human being, isn’t he. Let them do it, it won’t make him either poorer or richer. At other times he didn’t let them do it, or maybe he knew in advance whom they were going to kill and he let them, or whom they would screw in the ass, and he didn’t interfere.

At most, he would look surprised in the morning when his relief found a dead body.

He always sensed things correctly, even though he didn’t always know exactly what.

As to the nature of a silence, Balter could not be fooled.

As it was, the tramp had been sitting in Balter’s tree since four in the afternoon, not too high up, and he too was thirsty but no longer could get away unnoticed. His animal-like attention made the silence tense, which Balter recognized with the concentration of an experienced but helpless man. He had already been sitting there when Balter carefully marked his fallen apricots under the tree.

But Dávid decided to act: he rolled onto his side and, preparatory to getting up, stuck his foot out cautiously from under the light summer blanket. After all, the armchair filled with human shadows did not seem hostile. He wanted to anneal himself to his false feeling or expose the feeling as false.

He had to put his courage to the test in the middle of the night. He will not grow up to be a real man unless he passes the test.

He let the chair alone for now; let it hover on top of the furrows in the cold light.

But Balter’s hearing could not reconcile itself with the dense silence, with its personal characteristics, as it were, because he was counting on flitting and crackling sounds, on footfalls and familiar rhythms, on his son’s huge build, large beefy nose, and grinning face sporting a Hungarian mustache.

He was familiar with the logic and mental state of crime but not that of insanity.

That night, Dávid was visited by his dead father.

There was no image to match Balter’s feelings. And the same thing happened to Dávid that night. His experiences and expectations did not match the reality of the apparition. With his breathing, he whimpered audibly into the impossibility of his feelings. At which point he could not separate his desire from his dread, and this was the happiness necessary for confirmation. He could still hear his own breathing. The shadows in the armchair did not move. He was able to straighten up in front of it, a move that instantly emptied the chair, however.

It was not empty because no one had been in it before.

Rather, it became empty as if only now something was missing from it. The peculiar quality of this emptiness, like a blow to his body, annihilated his hope and, by the same measure, increased his fear.

He had to flee from the accursed room, which had once been his father’s nursery.

And Balter’s apricot fell when the tramp shifted.

Then he also remembered he had to get started, couldn’t stay with Imre’s aspic and let the greasy food sober him up. He remembered sliding his arm down the woman’s downy neck to take a heavy breast into his hand and weigh it while his other hand slid into the crack of her ass and then farther to the front. He had no time to waste, had to pull the woman’s hot cunt onto his stiff cock. He took into his mouth the muscular curve that takes the neckline to the shoulder and nibbled on it. Meanwhile she was pulling her stockings off her feet, in which there was a little indecent resistance. He knew her cunt would be sopping wet and hot but did not yet dare dip his fingers in it.

Instead he let go of the tasty mouthful and whispered into her ear, come to me, for the sake of your mother’s good goddamn lord, come here, I’ll give it to you.

But the woman shook her head in protest, which Balter could not see but he felt resistance in her body.

Stop fucking around with your pants, damn it. I want you to do it this way, the woman said soberly and from a great distance.

The forgotten sensation of having to do it this way hit his brain like a nightstick blow to the skull. Like the blows that, even if not of his own will, he had dealt to other people’s heads. If fate gives one enough time, one learns how to remember. Defenselessly he received the inappropriate image. What he saw was a rubber nightstick though it was his cock that became erect by remembering; involuntarily he buried his face in his hands. Not to see what he could not possibly feel any more strongly. He stayed like that for a long time. There was nothing to be done about it; the enjoyment of the horrible image sought refuge in his loins. And Dávid stopped in the doorway of the adjacent room. This was the pastor’s office. This was where the learned pastor held his Bible studies, from which the local youth had been staying away of late, and where during the winter prayer week members of the thinned-out congregation gathered. Although the pastor thought he had put his heart and soul into his job, nobody was interested, not even the ones who showed up. A few old benches stood along the walls, an ancient creaky harmonium, and the old rosewood writing table that, with the matching bookcase, had allegedly been brought here from the legacy of the pastor’s maternal great-grandmother Duchess Odescalchi of Braccano, Italy, and of which he was very proud. Holding his arms defensively before him, in the darkness slightly illuminated with stripes of blue moonlight, Dávid was hurrying on his way to the exit when his grandfather spoke up behind him, asking where he was going at such an hour.

To take a leak, Dávid replied.

Why are you going outside, the pastor asked quietly from near the harmonium. Why aren’t you going to the toilet as you’re supposed to.

The boy did not answer these questions; he felt for the key and turned it in the lock. He could not say to his grandfather that he had met his father and was now following him on his otherworldly travels.

When he stepped outside and carefully closed the door with its trembling glass panes behind him, he was not disappointed. The shadow that had disappeared from the armchair was not leading him on, but it stayed behind him and followed him. He had no doubt: it could only be he. He had not even been a schoolchild when they’d executed his father, and the family knew nothing about it. He did not dare reach into the fly of his pajama pants, how could he do that in front of someone. Even when they found out they did not talk of it; they had not been allowed to know the charges against him. The wound was open in all of them; the pain remained.

Dávid did not know that one could urinate in the presence of one’s father without hesitation, that some boys very proudly urinate together with their fathers, making awareness of their manhood all the stronger.

He’s your father, you stupid boy.

At this invitation, he took a long deep breath of air filled with the mist coming off the river and, feeling quite relieved after urinating for a good long time, walked slowly back into the shadows. His feet took him along the lukewarm brick pavement that led to the shed, but he did not stop there. The light carried and guided him, as well as a secure feeling that his unknown father was with him. Until he turned onto the footpath leading out of the parsonage garden onto the low-lying, molehill-ridden pasture at the edge of the village.

He could not continue on, because realizing where his feet might take him turned him into an immovable knot. He had vowed several times that he would never again go to the pond. He remembered this vow, as if seeing the madman waiting for him there, making him come. Dávid did the simplest thing in the world; he dropped to his knees, pressed his forehead to the ground, and with both arms protected his head from the moonlight and his imagination.

Actually, the madman wasn’t waiting for anybody. Wearing Balter’s shirt and Dávid’s pants, he was perched on a forked branch of the apricot tree. He sat on one of the large crotches and thrust his feet up against another. Now and again he reached out for an apricot to quench his thirst, and then a number of other apricots would fall to the ground. He was quite comfortable; he could even support his back. He followed Balter’s every tactical move with great interest, and watched as he sat, sunk into himself, his face buried in his hands.

They both felt on the nape of their necks the lunatic hooked face of the quarter-moon.

It was not a delusional feeling; this is how the figure stood before Dávid, wearing the stolen pants, challenging him.

To go on, to go out to the pond where the madman was waiting for him.

Never, he kept repeating to himself, as if speaking to the moonlight and, via the moonlight, to his dead father. As if wanting to convince his father that everything would be all right and he would not yield to temptation. He had rattled the man’s madness when their glances had slid into each other’s and, like two oil stains, blended into one. It was so good to speak in his own language that the shirt in his hand hadn’t mattered at all. He did not protest; his mouth simply stayed open in astonishment when the shirt disappeared from his hand and then, along with it, the mate of his own watchful countenance. Dávid ran away with it. When the noise of running had died away, silence ruled in the thicket. He stared at his extended hand, his face grew pensive, almost somber, and then he started toward the water as if looking for his lost mate. Dávid’s pants were too tight and too short on him. He waded into the peaceful water up to the top of his thighs and still he was looking at his empty hands. On his pimply face appeared that certain smile indicating that he knew what he had to do.

Using both hands at once, he disturbed the peace of the water’s surface.

He found the most reliable trace, yet he did not get to what he was looking for. Once the surface was smooth again, he repeated the movement; water and the palms of his hands splashed noisily.

He stared stiffly at his strongly arched hands and with tilted head listened to the sounds. His excited nerves were searching for a comparison, but there is no comparison without memory. As when one feels that something is about to pop into one’s mind, except that with this feeling one cannot comprehend one’s mind because the direct connection between feelings and mind has been severed.

Movement and the sound of movement became the comparison of his inability to remember.

He had discovered in the other human being something that he could not otherwise have realized in himself.

Excitedly he was looking for it between the good and the bad; the unceasing slaps of his palms on the water, speeded by impatience, threw him back to where he would have hastened if he could have remembered. He repeated the movement until the urge to urinate deflected his attention. Although the fly of his pants was open, like a wedge-shaped hole, he did not reach into it until he stopped urinating and the stain on the pants touched the water. Perhaps his hand was led by aggressive angels. He watched the urine stain on his thighs reach the water and then he took out his weenie, shrunk to the size of a child’s. Those angels, like humans, were pushing and pulling the foreskin on it, which made the member’s little hollows fill with blood. It kept growing. They flashed across his mind the lights of another world to make him not worry about what he had lost or could not find. They took away from the dimness of this world as much as they gave from the light of the other world.

Thus did they take away from him what Dávid had left in him of the secret madness of his countenance. For the sake of total forgetting, they even returned a little bit of his memories.

He caught sight of himself crawling along the edge of a deep ditch. At the bottom of the ditch lay a kitchen alarm clock, still ticking, but while with his ten fingers he scraped decaying fallen leaves to cover it up, it slowly stopped.

Nobody should see what he had done to the alarm clock, nobody should hear of his sin.

I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to, he shouted as his foster father beat him with his belt, beating him bloody. His foster mother followed with screams, but not because she wanted to protect him. His foster father’s belt buckle hit his thighs, waist, and back; the man hit anything he could reach.

And he kept scraping the decaying leaves, unto his sin, until it grew dark with the lunatic brightness.

An ambulance took him away in the middle of the night while, his lips turned blue, he was still thrashing about and shouting, frothy saliva flying, I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to do it.

Mighty was the struggle the angels put up for him and with him, and it tired him so much he could barely drag his dripping limbs to the shore.

They were lurching, staggering with him, tugging at him; their eyes were frightened by the indifferent sunshine. They tottered into the thicket, helplessly going around in circles with him, until they found a comfortable place under a bush where they would put him to sleep.

That is why his pursuer could find his abandoned sandals on the empty shore.

While they were shouting back and forth, hunting for footprints, finding fresh ones, he slept sweetly in his hiding place.

This is how it happened; all of this did happen. While the pastor found that no matter how much he had thought about all this, Creation’s logic would remain hidden from him. An uncomfortable time had gone by since Dávid went outside without a word. The pastor sat in the dark for hours, praying, and now it felt good to rest his thoughts on Dávid’s disobedience.

If they find the tramp, they might kill him.

His prayers led him nowhere.

What a mean, useless child, he thought. Didn’t I tell him to urinate inside the house. Now I must go looking for him.

What he could be grateful for to his God was that they found only some footprints and could not kill him.

When he had returned home the evening before, greatly agitated by his defeat and having found no prayer with which to calm his primitive hatred, he decided that, citing illnesses, he would ask his bishop to let him retire. Why in the world does that good-for-nothing kid want to piss outside all the time. There will be no problem, the bishop never thought much of the pastor’s temperament or service. Varró was a man of great learning, the bishop admitted, but he preferred to use brawn rather than brain; that was the sum of his opinion. But he mentioned this only to his secretary. He did this on purpose because the secretary worked for the state security services and the bishop knew it.

If he carefully conveyed information to them through the secretary, in time he received a correct and practical response.

Varró kept his mouth shut, the bishop could be pleased about that, but he bluntly refused to cooperate with state officials, behavior that the bishop had both approved privately and several times taken exception to publicly. Because of the pastor’s executed son, the bishop had had to face the music at the ministry of religion.

A week later, in the presence of the bishop, the secretary was ruminating over the abstract doctrinal question whether a Christian, having to choose between ecclesiastical solidarity and national interest, shouldn’t give preference to the latter.

The bishop replied without batting an eye that for a man belonging to any of the reformed churches, the two interests could not be in conflict.

This silent battle had been going on for years.

Finally state officials tried stealthily to have the village presbyters turn against the pastor and send him away on some pretext.

The physician’s wife and the secretary of the local party council were called in several times for so-called conversations, which is to say the two were taken, in a car with government license plates, to a secret-service apartment in Szentendre. The physician’s wife had a nervous breakdown, she did not stop crying and kept asking why, but why. The bishop would not stand for such strong-arm tactics in his diocese. He was also a member of the secret society then trying, under the guise of willing cooperation and tactical accommodation, to alleviate some of the damage caused by the Russian regime.

Thus he had to make some very sensitive concessions in order to gain some indulgence from government authorities in Varró’s case.

Varró knew very little of this, except that from then on his bishop was even more annoyed with him. He took it amiss when in 1957 the pastor’s son was hanged and not even given a proper grave. Because of his attitude, Varró assumed that the bishop sided with the government officials after all or perhaps worked directly for them, that that was the true state of affairs.

And he could not deny that he revived the idea of his own retirement after hearing the lamentable life story of the retired prison guard. But what tranquillity would he find in retirement, having failed to find any in his life. The only correct deed of his life would be to give up his calling, because then he’d cease deluding himself or others about being able to serve them honorably.

Just as his bishop wanted to be rid of him, it was good for him too to be free of himself.

Yet the way he thought about these matters differed greatly from the bishop’s thinking. Because the bishop kept the church’s interest, which is to say its principle of utility, in the forefront of his mind, for him the borders between tactical accommodation and forced cooperation were blurred. Varró, however, did not believe that what was useful or unavoidable was necessarily moral, and this pagan thought positively tortured him. The only deed that might please God, he imagined, would be if once, just once, he could convey to one other soul his own true feelings. And by this he meant the sheer human readiness for faith, which had appeared in him on an overcast day under the mighty sky when he was a small child and had accompanied him ever since. Faith justified truth; faith was also the test of true feelings, not the other way around. Until he could conjure up at least the necessity of faith for another human being, he could not retire; without that he would find no rest.

By retiring, he would only be doing a favor to his bishop or to some bigwig officials, which for him was the same thing.

So what was he to do, then. He did not delude himself into imagining that he was at some sort of turning point in his life. He had long known that the living agony always seeks a timely handle, and that is when it begins to eat away at faith.

Tension of the mind could be increased to the extreme, and that is how thinking considered to have some utility deflected his attention from his agony.

In certain cases he did not use his mind, precisely because he did not want to think about the world the way his bishop did.

Because he saw with alarm what his prayers were like. He did profit from them, the profit was personal, nothing else. With prayer he diverted his attention from his exhausted thinking and found himself ever farther from the agony that never ceased.

What could take him farther from the mercy of suffering, the only balm of the wretched, if not the cunning double-dealing of the life force.

He stood up to see about his grandson. Given the chaos of his soul, it was always a relief to see the innocence in the boy’s face. Even though he knew that at the boy’s age innocence was mainly illusory.

He looked for him everywhere and kept returning to the entrance to his office.

The tipcarts at the distant mine kept moving with their even creaking, and he knew the men working them were prisoners.

He did not want to shout. He stopped at the end of the brick walk, from there he only watched, did not want to disturb the boy or step on the dewy grass, he waited for him.

Softly he called his name.

The boy’s pajama-covered back moved under the moonlight, and he straightened up; slowly they walked toward each other.

The pastor remembered exactly what repulsive effect the overripe odor of adult bodies had had on him when he was a child. He worried about the boy; he would have preferred to know of his every step, though he knew he could not protect him from all the dangers lurking around him. He did not touch his grandchild carelessly. The slap the day before and the hug the day before that were the results of exhausted feelings.

He asked the boy why he’d once again refused to be obedient.

Alternating between complaints and excuses, Dávid deflected the rebuke; it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t help it if he’d had another bad dream.

Seriously, almost with scientific interest, they looked at the glossed-over feelings in each other’s eyes, visible in the bluish glow of the darkness. The pastor wanted to see the bad dreams. And Dávid well remembered the exhortation about what he should and shouldn’t do if he wanted to have pleasant dreams. He did not do the forbidden things anymore. He had some mild pangs because of them. Now they let it go at this; they knew their duties and without a word, walking side by side, returned to the office.

The pastor closed the glass-paned door but did not turn the key in the lock.

I didn’t have any bad dreams, said the pastor quietly and hesitantly, but frankly I couldn’t sleep either.

Dávid stopped near the door. His grandfather did not usually talk about himself. In the warm stuffy darkness he could smell the old furniture.

Sit down, please, said the pastor, with barely perceptible embarrassment. You must know there are some sleepless nights in everyone’s life.

It felt good to say this, though he did not think the confession was quite proper. It was as if in the guise of honesty, he was bragging about his weakness.

Then, with slow steps, they pleasantly cracked the sensitive silence taking shape between them.

The darkness told Dávid that this situation was real; this time there would be no scolding. Relieved, he groped for a bench, and as he lowered himself to it he felt gratitude to the night. The pastor sat at the harmonium, automatically pulling the stool close to the instrument. Under his foot the worn pedal of the bellows creaked and the harmonium’s innards began to groan and rattle. This beginning, meant to be playful, struggled with an insistent clattering until the aged instrument found its proper breath in the familiar melody of the psalm.

It was an unassuming little melody, moving in a limited range. It never ended, only returned to its starting point. After the third repetition, the pastor shouted in a terrifying voice.

They kill widows and orphans, he sang.

He did not trust his powerful sonorous bass to the arc of sounds summoned from the old mechanism, he did not fight the unpleasant noises, he gave voice to the darkness. At the same time his hands continued the tune, ignoring his shout. When he raked the tune through the lousy pipes of his instrument for the seventh time, his voice thundered with the shards splintered from the melody.

Suffers everything in silence, in silence.

With loud shouts, he informed his God that he suffered everything in silence.

And while the pastor thus sang out his most sensitive theological worries for his grandson to hear, Balter, sitting on his chair, quietly fell asleep in the doorway of his house.

Whatever had been written in advance, whatever had to happen, happened only on the following night.

In his sleep he plopped into the lap of that young girl whom he did not remember but who kept coming back to him from his childhood. The ice-cold light of the moon no longer tormented him. Carefully it went away from the back of his neck, leaving him alone with the weight of the young girl’s head. He was awakened by the creaking of the tipcarts at the distant mine, though he did not know when or where. Prisoners doing work outside the prison were brought over around this time in a special transport. He lay on the floor where he had fallen from his chair in his sleep. He seemed to hear the stamping of their feet at the ferry. The shifts at the Dunabogdány quarry were changed once a week but, straining his memory as he lay there, Balter could not remember what day it was.

He recalled only that the change happened on Tuesday nights.

It was dawning out there in the threat-filled deep-gray landscape.

They herded them across the island, then across the bridge, and then up the mountain.

During the entire day ahead of him, he must find an answer to the question of how the footprints could go from the trunk of the apricot tree to the low-lying dirt road when there were no footprints leading to the apricot tree. Naturally he could find no explanation.

When the police officers told him later, he nodded, smiling gently at his own stupidity.

When he reached the dirt road, he could still make out the contours of the footprints, but after a few steps they disappeared, dissolved in the sand, and he stood there foolishly before the mystery.

He placed his foot in the tramp’s last footprint and stared stiffly as he saw a perfect match.

He preferred to continue being thirsty than to venture farther from his house. He listened long into the silence of early dawn with the birds waking; would he hear the prisoners marching from the direction of the paved road. As he walked he pulled the rake across his every footprint.

He preserved only the footprints leading from the trunk of the apricot tree to the dirt road, signs left by the son who was planning to kill him. It also occurred to him that perhaps a prisoner thirsting for revenge had been prowling around him.

He drank from the water he had used two days earlier to steam the string beans. The jars, wrapped in newspaper and old clothes, were still standing in the big dishwashing pot; some of them stayed there for good.

Shortly after the midday bell he left the house after all and followed his son’s footprints. He knew these tracks well and hoped to discover new ones farther off. He felt like crying when he thought of the many occasions he had taken the little toes of his kicking baby son into his mouth.

He hid the rake in the thick prickly blackthorns by the side of the dirt road.

Perhaps chance led him this way, perhaps predestination; at any rate he wound up at the pond. He had heard about it but had never seen it before for himself. The picket lay there, the one he had seen once before in the presbyter’s hand. Two nails were sticking out of it. It was an old piece of rain-beaten wood with brand-new nails. He thought about that for a long time, could not decide whether to touch it. As if he had to decide to what power he should entrust himself. He could not comprehend what sort of connection the pastor and the presbyter could have had with his son. Even though the picket lay there as clear proof of this close connection.

Then he decided to go for sure; he took the picket with him.

A few days later, when the unforeseen events were reconstructed, the presbyter could corroborate Balter’s confession. He was the one, indeed, who had forgotten the picket and left it there when he found Dávid’s sandals at the edge of the thicket. Later this corroborating evidence gained decisive significance. Because if the old piece of wood had not belonged to the presbyter and Balter could have quickly hammered the two nails into it, then not only the intent of his deed would have become provable but also its particular cruelty.

The presbyter had already removed the old pickets of his fence when he realized he might not have enough new pickets. He had to replace the old bent nails on the old pickets with new ones. To make sure they wouldn’t be loose in the old holes, he hammered one in a little higher and the other a little lower than the old holes. Experts found his testimony truthful. The pastor had called to him just as he was about to refit the picket, but he took it along with him because without a weapon one never knew what might happen in an encounter with a tramp.

No, he would not have hit him with it, because of the nails.

Balter gave his account of everything without hesitation.

He caused some difficulty with his behavior only when he had to relate the immediate circumstances of the deed.

It’s lucky the culprit was not my son, he repeated gently, smiling with great satisfaction, very lucky, that is my great luck.

They attributed his words to his inevitable confusion.

At the time when the offense was committed, fallen apricots almost completely covered the ground, and more kept falling. The investigating policemen picked up undamaged apricots a few times and ate them.

Balter did not deny the deed; therefore his hazy details or gratuitous smiles did not hinder the investigation in the least. The police dutifully contacted Budapest and let their colleagues in the Zugló precinct see what they could find in the Balters’ apartment in Turul Street, but for a long time they had no response. Not only the new uneven spots on the ground and the abundant bloodstains smeared everywhere, but also the trampled thick pulp of apricots were sufficient evidence of a struggle between the two men.

To re-create the events of that night they had to rely on marks that could be mapped exactly. Based on the injuries caused at different times, the coroner estimated that the perpetrator dragged the body into his house about four hours after the death. Balter confirmed this. Outside it was getting light all right, that’s for sure, he said, smiling gently.

But it was still night inside his house.

He did not light the kerosene lamp, he explained; instead he ate everything edible he could find in the dark. That means you had to step over the body several times, the policemen noted. That’s right, he agreed, he did not deny that he went to the pantry for food and then back to the table because that is where he ate his meals. First he ate what had been left over from the string beans seasoned with garlic, but he did not want to lie, he was still hungry. He went to the pantry again. He had one and a half dry Csaba sausages, which he ate with three scallions but without bread. He went to the pantry a third time, he does not want to lie, and put away a full packet of sweet biscuits while standing there.

Then you must have been looking at the body, man, while you ate, said the policemen, because you were standing right above it.

He doesn’t want to lie, he replied, smiling gently, that’s right, that’s how it happened. At the kitchen table he also polished off three cubes of processed cheese. He ate them sitting down, the way he ate the sausage. He peeled the skin off the sausage, because he can’t eat anything with the skin on, not even sausages.

The empty saucepan with the spoon in it was still there on the stove, next to the dishwashing pot. On the table tops of scallions, bits of sausage skin, the large knife, the biscuits’ torn, empty cellophane wrap, shreds of tinfoil torn off the cubes of processed cheese.

But to the question what he had been doing between 11:30 in the evening and 3:30 in the morning, Balter could not give an acceptable answer.

Maybe I fell asleep, he said with his gentle uncertain smile.

During those hours, of course, it became lighter in the house, still warm from the previous day’s heat, where, the policemen assumed, Balter had to smell the odor emanating from the torn flesh.

He smelled it; he did, for sure.

At dawn he took off his clothes.

He did not put his soiled pants and shirt with the rest of his laundry but on the kitchen chair, properly folded and rolled into a package. He took a few bottles out of the dishwashing pot and dipped his towel into the water from which he had been drinking, very economically, for two days. A little bit was still left at the bottom. He squeezed out the towel, not to waste any, and that’s how he washed off the stains from his hands, face, and neck.

He would not say bloodstains.

Those stains came off easily enough; sweet apricot is much harder to wash off, because it is sweet and sticky as honey. He had to dip and squeeze out the towel several times.

But you saw, man, didn’t you, that everything was becoming bloody.

He did; he doesn’t want to lie.

The bloodstained towel had dried in the meantime; they found bloody water in the dishwashing pot.

Truth was, he didn’t pay much attention to that because he was in a hurry. He washed off most of it, wanted to catch the first ferry. It leaves at 4:40 unless someone requests a special trip.

He would not have wanted to wake up the ferrymen for a special trip.

He put on the same white shirt, the same dark suit in which he had taken leave of his mates on the Vác shore to take the first ferry in this direction.

He carefully locked the house with the body inside.

The sleepy ferrymen noticed nothing unusual about him.

On the far side, at the end of the landing dock, a young woman waited for them that summer dawn. She had a medium-size suitcase in her hand. Halfway across, the navigator had already noticed that little Melinda was coming home. With irrepressible joy he passed the news to the ticket taker. Until the side of the ferryboat bumped against the landing dock, the two men wondered why she was arriving at such an unusual time. They could see that she maintained her smile, though she seemed a bit sleepy. The ticket taker did not tie up the ferry and the navigator did not even shut off the engine, rather they both began to shout to her, asking her to get on board, they’d take her across on a special trip.

Balter the murderer stepped off the boat without saying good-bye, and the lovely girl got on, laughing. The special trip across the river carried Dávid’s sister, who had thought out well in advance what she would say to the ferrymen and to her grandfather, and how she would satisfy her kid brother’s curiosity.

Balter broke out in a sweat, but nothing happened during the early morning crossing, and the ferrymen certainly did not ask him anything. Later, shrugging their shoulders, they said they had figured he’d been called in to his former workplace. He probably could use a supplement to his pension. As soon as he stepped off the ferry, he removed his jacket and with a youthful motion threw it over his shoulder. He walked up the paved shore like that. There was no one on the street that led him back to the prison.

The single opening in the endless, ancient, three-story-high stone wall was a small steel door. For security reasons, the former driveway had been walled off sometime in the 1950s, but the nicely carved baroque frame of the main gate was left in the wall. He would have thought it improper to show up with the jacket over his shoulder. He put it on at the personnel entrance before he rang the bell. Shortly, an eye appeared in the peephole and the door opened invitingly.

The prison guards, his former pals, received Balter with frenzied enthusiasm. Their riotous shouting lured more of them out of the building and into the guardroom; they all touched him, patted him on the back, laughing, bantering, and he naturally did not respond. The men found nothing unusual about this since they had never known him to be talkative. They pushed him onto a chair, and he, seeing the joy of so many strong men, smiled gently.

Suddenly he remembered something he found funny enough to tell as a little joke.

Is that female rat still coming around, he asked them.

He turned very quietly to them with this question, which magnified its effect. They marveled at him, as at some sage who sooner or later will touch on the main point. This was an offhand remark made among guards, convicts serving severe sentences, and newly arrived prisoners.

Of course they didn’t talk about it in regular conversations. Real men don’t talk about matters of the heart. Only a few words, whispered through clenched teeth, and the terrifying thought would begin to take root in the minds of new prisoners.

Don’t take it hard, partner, thus the old boys to newly arrived ones, at least we have rats here.

This was a team game that sometimes even a rat could not avoid. The prison guards with their dogs were meant to catch rats alive, or they’d help in the hunt, which is no mean entertainment and — the most important thing — not without danger.

It was something they had to do, anyway, when the rats grew too numerous in the food depot or came over en masse in the drainpipes from the bishop’s palace, helped by a high water level.

Once we had a braggart here who could take it for twenty years. He didn’t want to go for the pitcher, you see, but he did get to like one of them good-looking females.

You won’t believe it, goddamn it, but there’s always a meek one among them who gets hooked on it.

All you’ve got to tell a newly arrived convict in the dark is that if she comes just shove it in and let her have it.

Sleep eventually overcomes the terrible dreams on those first nights, and when that happens, in with the rat under the cover.

When the guffawing died down, all he said was that he killed him.

They could not stop their wild laughter right away since they did not know this new version of the prank. But they did know that Balter and his wife had been living in a murderous relationship all their lives, in other words that they had a bad marriage.

Now they saw the strange yellow mud that was stuck to his shoes, saw that his suit hung loosely on his frighteningly scraggy body.

All he wanted from them was to call the warden.

They remained quiet, no one dared do this since none of them saw any reason for or sense in doing it.

Once in a while one lets his wife have a good one, or even beats her up. The next day, or a week later, they make up with a lot of tears and promises, and that’s when women screw best.

While they were thinking about this, they had to notice the hitherto unfamiliar smile on Balter’s suspiciously dirty and unshaven face; until then they had seen that kind of gentleness only on the faces of strangers.

He reached into his pocket for his house key and put it on the table. The telephone was right there on the guardroom table, but it did not occur to anyone to take steps while Balter was sitting there.

They were quiet, looking at him, afraid even to light up. After a while it became impossible not to believe he had killed somebody.

But a long time passed before one of them finally left the room.

From that moment on he answered all their questions from behind his kindly smile.

When the guard came back and stopped by the door, prepared to take him to the warden, Balter readily followed him.

The Lover of Her Beauty

The expensive things strewn on the floor, the brand-new work clothes missing from the hook, and the fine yellow leather shoes kicked to where the stinking ankle boots used to be caused no small headache for the Gypsies. Never in their lives had they seen such yellow leather shoes.

How did they get here; who made Tuba’s work boots disappear.

Nevertheless they went back to work.

Although not everything was in perfect order they could not stop. If only because the tar was melting, boiling, bubbling in the cauldron, and they were being paid by area of repairs completed.

The sun was high in the cloudless sky; the big machine was puffing.

Usually they did not talk while working, but their silence now became bitter and agitated. They were also affected by the beer they’d drunk at the nearby roadside food stall, as if at a friendly celebration, in the company of their Hungarian foreman, an older man named Bizsók.

The work team had five members.

A kid named Jakab stoked the fire of the machine; he also handled the cauldron’s feeder. He was a tall, puny young man, still an adolescent. The stubble above his overly thick lips and on his round, childlike chin was more like fuzz; on his well-shaped shiny skull one could see that it was no barber who had sheared him so mercilessly. One fine early morning he’d awakened to find his limbs tied to the bed while a pair of scissors went snipping around his head. In vain he shouted and implored them to let him go; in vain he yanked at the straps as hard as he could, which was not very hard, or hurled terrible curses at the men. They told him, stop jumping around unless you want scabs on your pretty mug. They lathered his head and shaved it smooth.

He let them work the razor; he was afraid, trembling, he endured it, sniveling; not very manly of him, but he cried.

Now his large dark eyes were again filling with so many glistening tears that he could barely see what he had to do. Two men pushed their metal wheelbarrows under the feeder. The iron sizzled and sputtered as the boiling tar flowed into the barrow, the hub creaked and grated under the hot weight.

The two men with the wheelbarrows were brothers, both of them mature men with families; they resembled each other too — skinny, hairless, black, and small. Muscles hardened into knots kept their backs curved even when they were not wheeling their barrows. They wore cotton work pants, long faded from too much light and too much washing, asbestos gloves on their hands, and wood-soled clogs on their feet. One was László, the other Imre, but nobody called them by their first names. If somebody asked for Téglás, everyone knew the caller was referring to Imre, the younger brother, since the older one hardly ever said anything and one could not talk to him as to a human being. But Imre talked a lot, quickly and enthusiastically, so there was no point in addressing the other brother, not even by his family name. He acted as if he were mute, yet he enjoyed laughing at things and one could tell from the roguish squints in his eyes that he knew what was what. As small children they had slept by their father’s side, curled into each other. As part of the world’s natural order the smaller boy nestles into the lap of the bigger one. The smallest boy was always pressed closest to the father, clinging to the large body with his tiny hands, and the other boys, in order of birth, curled into one another. Their mother and sisters were available to the boys only in the light of day; this was the strict moral code. But where was the mud-walled, sod-lined shanty, half dug into the ground, with its handsome, carefully built little oven and the always spick-and-span cooking plate. How many years ago did their parents die. Nevertheless the strict law of birth succession still ruled the boys’ relationships. Death too they could imagine only as they did the red-hot, empty cooking plate when there was nothing to cook.

Whatever laughing László did, crackbrained Imre did as well; he couldn’t help it. But if Imre, head and arms flying in all directions, began to pour out all those superfluous words, László would accompany the many sentences with the lazy nod of an experienced man. The truth of the younger brother was reinforced by the prestige of the older. Bizsók also noticed that the older brother never questioned the younger one’s word when they were around Hungarians; at most he’d busy himself with something else.

Perhaps it was only that eternally valid difference in the depths of their souls that made their furrowed faces slightly different.

In a state of constant readiness, his eyes wide, Imre concentrated on what the right thing was to say, while the older Téglás brother knew what they should do.

They ran as they pushed the wheelbarrows heavy with the hot molten material, and then they emptied them with a single quick lift, neatly tipping them over; sizzling and sputtering, the tar oozing out in front of Tuba, who with wide leisurely strokes of his very heavy leveling blade smoothed out any lumps in the hot mass, kneeling then squatting then kneeling again. He worked with incredible elegance and absolute inner discipline. The fifth man on the team, Bizsók, was both their mechanic and their supervisor. Sometimes he would check with his level and other instruments on a half-finished job when it was still possible to make corrections if need be, but the judgment of Tuba’s eyes seldom disappointed him. This Bizsók was the oldest and, by the nature of things, most consequential member of the team. The Gypsies idolized him for his fairness, though they had his weak points pegged as well. Sometimes among themselves they would contemptuously call him dumb peasant. Because it was not his work, not even his nice family, but his apple orchard that meant everything to him. He’d hardly have gotten home from work after a long train ride when he’d head straight for his orchard; he never stopped working. The Gypsies considered him a wastrel, a man who’d wasted his life for the sake of unpredictable profits. If the road construction company, which covered half the country, hadn’t urgently needed every skilled hand it could get, and if Bizsók hadn’t had the sense of duty he had, he could have retired, but as an old-fashioned man he considered the world’s anonymous needs as a law governing his personal life.

He kept at both his job and his apple orchard for the same reason, though he couldn’t have expressed in words what his compulsion was.

And the Gypsies certainly couldn’t have told him what to do differently.

Since both his grown sons had built their own houses, many different jobs awaited him, and him alone, in his enormous bountiful orchard. Occasionally he even helped his foster daughter, though because of her foreign blood he was a little afraid of her. Bizsók was rational and somewhat reserved, a man whose circumstances had taught him sensible husbandry, so he created order for himself out of whatever was at his disposal. He came from one of the most deprived areas of the Alföld, but he’d never thought of himself as poor among the truly poor. He couldn’t, in any case, because a man in a Tiszahát-region village with two threshing machines to his name was considered a rich man in those days. He had inherited one machine from his father before the war, the other he received when he came home from a POW camp, from the bequest of a Jewish thresher who had perished in the war. It did not take long before both machines were taken away from him, and thereafter he had lived away from his family.

He left because he couldn’t swallow the insult of being ordered about at the collective farm’s machine and tractor station by his former day laborers, the very men who’d been responsible for taking his expensive threshing machines away from him.

Sitting in the high saddle of the steamroller, his arms resting on the steering wheel, he watched his men from behind his thick glasses. These round spectacles were surely a peculiar old item. The ravages of time had turned the translucent frame yellow, and it seemed to have become organically fused with the dark, sunburned cushions of his fleshy face. A battery may run down, an axle may wear out, the cohesive tension in the molecules of artificial materials may diminish, but he had a hard time giving up his longing for eternity even when it concerned only a pair of glasses. Not for himself, not for his family, but on the roads and in his apple orchard he worked for eternity, or at least against mortality.

For years this reasonable and experienced man had been conducting a quiet battle against the natural fate of his glasses. He could not have cherished his own life more; as a soldier and a prisoner of war he’d learned not to value life too much, but he treated his glasses with a circumspect caution bordering on madness that he never accorded himself or others.

The best place for his glasses was on the wide bridge of his slightly flattened nose, where he could nourish its material, in the perishing cold of winter and in the heat of summer, with the warmth of his skin and the fine grease of his perspiring pores. He never removed his glasses unnecessarily. Not even when walking from the cold air into a warm place, which fogged up the lenses. He owned something he could protect only by touching it as rarely as possible. He was content with his fate too, as long as he didn’t think about it.

István Bizsók was the full name of the man with the glasses.

The road builders hauled two gray trailers with them to their jobs; they never built a new road, only repaired existing ones, doing their share to keep the old highways in working order. Among themselves they called one trailer the office because under the barred window was a small table covered with wrapping paper on which Bizsók kept drawings of road sections to be repaired, plans and accounts relating to the expected materials to be used, warehouse receipt-books, work logs, workers’ time sheets, a ruler, a few pencils, and an eraser, but nothing else. Empty pay envelopes were kept in the drawer, which had a working lock. Next to the door stood the stove on which they cooked supper in the fall and early spring months or on rainy summer days.

In the dim far end of the trailer Bizsók had his bed, which was considered comfortable. The second trailer served as quarters for the four Gypsies.

Sometimes they set up the two trailers perpendicularly to each other, creating a small courtyard, and sometimes they had the trailers parallel and facing, making a small street for their communal life.

They picked carefully the locations where they settled. What sorts of folk lived in the area, were their dogs wild, what was close to them, what was farther away. Gypsies from the Alföld traditionally did not consider peasants as human and they feared them as they did wild animals. But Tuba came from Transdanubia, from the boundary region on the shores of the Mura river, and things were different with him; he also behaved differently with Hungarians. He knew ethnic Croatians, Serbs, and Slavs, and he claimed they were even wilder and crueler than Hungarians. Because a Hungarian, when he’s alone, is a coward, but these others are wild even when they have no help from anywhere. Bizsók had to be on guard to see that the locals did not blame the Gypsies when something went missing. They had to know the directions the wind blew, where there was water, where the nearest well was. For some time now he had been relying on Tuba’s judgment to answer these questions. János Tuba was the first Gypsy to be hired on this work team; other Gypsies then joined up as Hungarian workers slowly left the company. Later, Bizsók brought in the Téglás brothers and in turn they brought their hapless sister’s son, poor little Jakab, who had been with them for only a few weeks.

Hungarians did not work at such hard and ill-paid jobs.

When Tuba joined the team, he had scarcely been older than Jakab was now. The other men hadn’t wanted a Gypsy on their team for anything in the world, but because of his appearance and behavior they just swallowed hard. They did not even discuss among themselves whether they should say no to Bizsók’s choice. As things turned out, Bizsók made an effort to get to know these Gypsies, but he did not really succeed. And he couldn’t even be absolutely sure that his foster daughter, Gyöngyvér Mózes, for whom, at his wife’s urging, he might buy an apartment in Budapest, was not a Gypsy herself. She sang nicely, and it was probably her blood that drove her into the arms of so many different men. Even if she did not bring every one of them home with her. They had found out, or heard, that Ágost Lippay was no longer with her; he’d run away from her while they were abroad somewhere, and now she was with some poet who had helped her to get radio work. In time, Bizsók realized that every Gypsy was different.

But he did not know what to do with this realization of his.

Actually he should have; after all, he had been together with Gypsies in the POW camp. Whether or not she was a Gypsy, he balked at buying the apartment, yet he could not say no to this little woman.

The Gypsies had customs he did not comprehend but instinctively felt it was best not to pry into.

They had heard Gyöngyvér sing on the radio twice, on Sunday mornings, old folk songs, accompanied on original instruments. She bent and stretched her voice and made it tremble. Bizsók did not like it at all.

He liked Vera Jákó more; she sang regular Hungarian songs.

And then there was this Jakab whom the others had sheared bald for some reason.

Bizsók heard what they were doing, saw that the boy’s curls were gone, but he did not interfere.

They’re young, that’s the time for foolishness.

When the giant Tuba joined them one summer, in the great heat Bizsók ordered the men to park the two trailers in the shade of a gigantic, solitary tree. Tuba had just mustered out of the army, along with a friend who was with him and who also was a well-built strapping lad, probably not a Gypsy.

And he said that before the army he had never worked anywhere.

Which made a big impression on the others. Bizsók did not like to remember this.

And how excited this calm boy, this János Tuba, became when he said, right in front of the others, that lightning might easily hit that big tree. He flouted Bizsók’s authority not with opposition but with excitement. If they didn’t steer clear of trees like this, then the lightning wouldn’t steer clear of them. And he turned his dark frowning face away not only from the men but also from the gigantic, solitary tree. He moved among them with his head bent as if his prediction might come true at any moment, as indeed it did two days later.

They never talked of these events among themselves, not then or later. But Bizsók could not forget the centuries-old giant tree splitting in half right before their eyes. How with a frightful clap the brilliant light struck among them, and its flame, sizzling and whimpering with living sap, burst up to the sky raging in the darkness.

And who could tell what Tuba remembered or forgot or what he was thinking about all the time.

The man fascinated everyone, not just with his size and behavior but mainly with his beauty.

What anyone could see with his own eyes was, oddly, the thing everyone chose to keep quiet about. Perhaps it was better that way. Beauty is not something worth talking about with anyone. Bizsók had the reputation of a man who loved fairness and equality. Then why would he concern himself with another man’s looks. Everybody should do his job properly, that was all that counted. Some people believed he was a member of some sect in the Alföld, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Anabaptists. It was rumored that Anabaptists had to immerse themselves, one after the other and stark naked, in the waters of the Tisza or the Túr, at midnight, while other members provided light with tar torches. Of course, the compelling characteristic of a good reputation is that it binds to the person concerned even if that person hasn’t the slightest inclination to be fair, say, or even if the notion of equality goes contrary to his personal interests.

Bizsók treated others with unusual consideration, so his men counted on his considerateness and wouldn’t have allowed him to be inconsiderate.

It was also rumored that men and women did this contemptible obscene thing together in the Tisza and the Túr. And they took young girls there too.

They too could feast their eyes on my old man’s balls.

Bizsók knew that no matter what people believed or said, there was no one who knew more about old machines and motors than he did. Maybe as much as he, but not more. Since there wasn’t a whit of show-off in him, he remained modest about his knowledge. Whenever he became absorbed in his work and the irrelevant sounds receded from him, in the pleasant giddiness of work he caught himself feeling on his hand and on the nape of his neck the weight of his father’s stern regard. He did everything as his father taught him, perhaps the way his father had learned from his father, stealthily watching him work. But he could not hide from his father the new techniques he developed using his own common sense. He had to introduce these methods in defiance of the paternal surveillance, as it were.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that he felt something but that suddenly his neck began to itch and he had to turn around.

These moments became even more peculiar if it turned out a live person was observing him.

In Tuba’s silently observant huge eyes, Bizsók discovered his own hungry childhood face. Whereupon he reverted to being the unpleasant but reliable father, the eternal master who keeps on teaching his sons. He had never bothered with his sons as much as he did with Tuba. And though he wouldn’t officially give his name to his foster daughter for anything in the world, and would have preferred to pay for only half of her apartment, no more, yet he loved her more than he did his boys. Passion is not something a man can will; at most he can be on the lookout for it and make sure it won’t engulf him.

In everything that required extraordinary physical strength, inventiveness, or quick-wittedness, this young man was better.

For example, nobody could light a fire out in the open more adroitly than he. The wind could be blowing, rain falling, no matter how wet the firewood was, his fires burned clear and smokeless. He knew which wind carried rain, how the shade would shift, what the arc of the birds’ flight meant, which well had stale water, and, when necessary, what could be made out of what.

He was also the first to find common ground for trust with strangers, even though everyone was averse to Jews and Gypsies.

Or they’d hardly have arrived at a new place when he’d be bringing to his fellow workers a capful of mushrooms, wild strawberries, and pigeon eggs, and rolling them out for the others.

Bizsók did everything to keep the men from seeing how deeply this touched him.

During the last months, when on quiet evenings, having stared at the dying fire’s random flames for long minutes under the majestic night sky and the stars spread over them, and then amid groans and yawns and cracking of numbed joints they turned in, Bizsók closed his trailer door feeling he had failed to take care of something important.

Perhaps because in his family he had taken care of almost everything.

The fire’s heat and light fed a feeling of closeness among them, but this could be sensed only when the fire died and it became dark and cold and they missed the closeness.

Neither here nor anywhere else did they have a home.

As he listened to the sound of thumping feet, various thuds and seemingly endless murmurs and rummaging about, Bizsók contentedly acknowledged that their place was too small for the Gypsies. His contentment had to do with his privileged position, and perhaps there is no just man who doesn’t find his enjoyable privileges flattering.

Somehow he had to consider himself to be a little above the others.

To do this, he sometimes considered himself better because he was their supervisor and mechanic, sometimes because he was older, sometimes because he was Hungarian, and sometimes because, to his great good luck, he was not a Catholic.

They were all lonely here, so much so that they couldn’t accustom themselves to other people anymore, couldn’t share their loneliness with others. But they were also used to the fact that in their loneliness they lived in close proximity to their fellow workers’ loneliness. Although he enjoyed his small rightful privileges very much, with passing years Bizsók began to miss, especially in the night hours, the special silent attention of another person. As he locked himself in his trailer every night, he’d sometimes think that tomorrow he’d take care of this too. To spell it out, what he meant was that he should make up for what he’d missed or neglected. First thing tomorrow morning he’d move this other man’s bed into his trailer. He was thinking not of Tuba, not of sharing his privileges, but of Tuba’s bed.

He had already picked out a place for the bed.

We’d be much more comfortable like this, he would say bashfully on that imagined tomorrow morning.

The Gypsies shouldn’t be so cramped.

When talking to himself, he addressed Tuba as if he were not a Gypsy. In the mornings the dangerous proposition would lurk in the back of his mind because, ever since Jakab had started working with them, the day began very rambunctiously in the other trailer. Luckily, by afternoon he’d forget what he had wanted and didn’t remember it until going to bed again. What he envied was not their rambunctiousness but something indefinable. Actually, he could have said it out loud, for now there was no other Hungarian on the team from whom he’d have to hide his generosity and love of humankind.

He imagined the festive moment; they would all be together. He imagined the deep silence that would follow his words. But it was precisely the image of this pampered silence that kept him from finding an appropriate occasion for the needed words.

They knew everything about each other, or almost everything.

Behind János Tuba stood his dead grandfather who had raised him until he was twelve. Everything he knew he knew from him — his concentration, the broad arcs of his movements; he learned his ease and dignity from him too. His grandfather had neither land nor house; there was nothing anyone could take from him. No one had given him anything for free, either, but he had a fine axe, a good gouging hoe, and a few homemade curved and straight-blade knives. From early spring until the first snowfall the two of them roamed the villages along the Mura. Tuba very seldom saw the inside of a school when his grandfather was alive. If gendarmes turned violent or county officials threatened his grandfather with fines, they stayed outside a little longer than their work required. When there was nothing left of a tree felled in autumn and his grandfather could make nothing further from the shavings, they had to move on. For a long time he had no idea what it was like to play; his childhood passed without a friend who might have initiated him into secrets or knowledge other than his grandfather’s.

At school he observed the Hungarian children with great concern, watching what sort of things they did among themselves, because he understood neither their enjoyments nor their meanness nor their little business deals.

Not only was he unfamiliar with their feelings but he didn’t understand the words Hungarians used to try to restrain their freely rambling desires and fickle attractions. He and his grandfather slept under the open sky. He didn’t know why his grandfather had been cast out by his own people or why the two of them had to live beyond the boundaries of their own tribe. They spent every winter on the mountain in Rátka, in a remote, well-concealed hut his grandfather had built. They could see from the house the great bend in the frozen-over Mura, with the willows. Border guards would interrogate his grandfather when they were looking for fugitives, and they’d shout and swear; once they took him away because they thought he was lying. But other people could not see the hut, not from any angle, unless they spotted smoke rising from its chimney. They came off the mountain only when it began to thaw, when at night the ice cracked and popped in the river.

They could be content because in every village people waited for them impatiently.

They could find lodging in any house.

Uncle Tuba this and Uncle Tuba that, you know how much we love you, an’ the little boy’ll feel better with our young ’uns; with words like these, the peasants would coax the grandfather.

You don’t have to worry about food, the woman is cooking for nine anyway.

It was most difficult in the autumn because that was when his grandfather had to bargain hard with the peasants.

When life had gone to sleep in the trees, old Tuba’s raw material, a peasant would go with them to pick out the right poplar, willow, chestnut, or linden in his woods or at the edge of his hayfield. Of course the obstinate peasant wanted to trick the Gypsy, which made him act foolishly, as if deliberately setting out to get the worst deal for himself. The peasant would never let old Tuba cut down a tree that he had singled out as a good one — and from which, when spring came, Tuba could carve for the peasant a scalding tub for plucking chickens, a washbasin, baking peels, a tray, and spoons for lard. Or the peasant would cut it down himself and by springtime would have used it all up for firewood, stupid peasant. They started with the larger pieces, the scalding tub and washbasin; from the interior of such bowl-like pieces they lifted, very smartly and economically, wood for the smaller items, so that in the end only shavings remained. The peasant needed everything that could be carved from his tree, just as the carvers could not have survived for more than two weeks without the grandfather’s labor. But a variety of profound irritations and annoyances lurked in this necessary and strict exchange.

You won’t cut down that tree of mine, you filthy Gypsy, damn your mother’s dear God Almighty.

And when after all the unnecessary jabber they finally came to terms, the stupid peasant always wanted to have more things carved from his tree than there was wood for. He’d roll his eyes and watch from a distance to see if the old man and boy were not cheating him. Or he’d ask for something that old Tuba would not carve from a tree for all the money in the world.

That’s a peasant for you, doesn’t even know the value or nature of his own tree.

Of course there was always more in a tree than what the peasant could imagine in that hard noggin of his. But they didn’t let him know that, let him be content thinking he’d managed to trick the Gypsy again. The Gypsy can’t help it if he has more brains than the cunning peasant, who always wants more and who always loses everything.

The extra objects disappeared for a while under ashes or shavings and turned up later in faraway markets and fairs.

They could have made even more money on each tree if they’d had a horse and wagon, so Grandpapa Tuba daydreamed; necessity made him more honest than he could reasonably be expected to be.

They were given food and shelter, this and that, some produce, some secondhand clothes, but to survive the winter they needed a little money as well. The old man did not want much — to carve out no more than a few extra spoons, well, maybe a bowl or washbasin. The peasant who could outwit him had not yet been born, and if he had been, old Tuba and his grandson would give his house a wide berth.

Because they kept their eyes and ears open at all times, they saw that there were peasants whom even other peasants avoided; no Gypsy either would have anything to do with such people.

There were threatening beings in the familiar world, some of them more powerful than Gypsies, and every evening the grandfather would tell his grandson a story about one of their deeds. Souls and ghosts would appear from the dark woods and move toward the fire, but they could be friends of neither fire nor light. When the tale ended, the grandfather threw a few more shavings on the fire, making it smoke a little, letting the wild animals prowling around them smell it, and the ghosts gently withdrew into the night filled with bloody secrets.

They could hear the village dogs yelping one after the other as the ghosts passed by, and they kept barking for a long time after to keep the ghosts from returning.

Every successive day brought back the light again.

In the memories of older people in the area, the boy and his grandfather are preserved as two figures in tattered clothes who reappear every spring looking haggard and pitifully thin as they turn into the muddy yards. At that time of year the plump peasant gleams with the extra weight he has put on during his idle winter. If a dog barked angrily, they would stop outside the fence or hedgerow. They never walked side by side; the boy either lagged behind or walked in front of his grandfather, and when they talked while walking they shouted. And they never wound up side by side, as if there weren’t space for that, or as if neither of them needed help or encouragement from the other. The old man wasn’t tall, but the dignity of his bearing heightened his figure in the peasants’ eyes. The women would have liked to touch and hold the little boy, for his beauty moved them, but he radiated only refusal.

For a long time Tuba seemed untouchable; later he seldom longed for physical contact with anyone.

The old man carried a large sack on his left shoulder; he also carried his axe on the left so he had one hand free. He parted his thick gray hair in the middle; according to an ancient law, no barber’s scissors could touch it. And if the masters or the gendarmes were to do that to a Gypsy, as sometimes they did — and the old man imprinted this possibility deep in the little boy’s mind — no greater shame could befall him in his entire bitter life. The way he’d avoided this shame, his grandfather told him, was that when they had wanted him in the army, he took out another birth certificate in the priest’s office in Korpavár. One had to claim to be a few years older or younger when filling out forms so as not to be taken away.

The priest always found somebody in his book with a convenient birth date.

And ever since then he and his children have been going around with this false name. When he went to see the priest in Korpavár, the real Tuba had been dead a long time.

And his grandfather was four years older than it said in his papers.

According to ancient custom, two tight plaits of hair called kader in Romany framed his nicely furrowed, stern face; he allowed no emotion to move a single muscle of his face because that would offend his forebears.

By the way, this sack on his shoulder was the big sack with which peasants frightened misbehaving brats. The Gypsy will cut you in two, put you in his sack, and take you away. He carried the sack as his ancestor had done. The strutting foolish peasant believes he is cussing you, but in his language too, cigány, Gypsy, means human being.

And he feels good when he says, hey, cigány, this or that. For us it’s like he’s not saying anything.

Grandfather Tuba remembered old events as he had heard about them from the stories of his own grandfather; if he could not remember something he rounded off the story by giving his own version. János Tuba told stories the same way to his fellow workers, saw the old fire his grandfather had built in place of the fire around which the road workers sat, and while he filled in the missing pieces from his own experiences he saw his grandfather squatting in the slow-moving veils of smoke, scraping the dying embers with his stick.

When Bizsók was with them, János Tuba skipped over certain things on purpose, so as not to initiate a Hungarian into important knowledge; or he might stretch some facts in other parts of the story.

But among themselves none of these men liked talking about himself or about real events of his life.

And the evenings were not too long either.

After work they had to wash up, and even though they neither washed nor mended their clothes — they took their clothes home and left these chores to their women — they always found things that had to be put in order. While one cleaned the trailer, another would cook. The Gypsies ate what they had cooked together, but Bizsók ate separately. Occasionally they would all go out for a spritzer or, more rarely, a beer, and Bizsók would go with them if only because he didn’t like their being on their own. Four Gypsies appearing in the inn of a strange village was something fearsome; in some places it was not even advisable to go in. Sometimes one of them would want to be alone and would stay back while the others went out. Winding up in the midst of strangers’ lives increased their sense of belonging together; Bizsók looked somewhat askance at this but, as their supervisor, realized that these experiences gave them material to talk about. And since he also had to forge his team into a socialist work brigade, after such an outing he could enter in his log that the brigade members had practiced socializing in their communal life after work.

Tuba was more likely to go out on his own or more frequently to stay back in the trailer.

Bizsók did not like this much.

Sometimes Tuba’s army buddy would show up; the men would find them together when coming back to the trailers, the mustached Hungarian who’d come with Tuba when he joined the team. He always arrived as if materializing out of the ground, and he disappeared in the same imperceptible way. Bizsók had nothing to say about that. He liked that someone had such a loyal friend. They were similar in build too. He always vanished without a word and returned without saying anything; the men could not ask a person like that where he had been or what he had been doing. At most they could tease him, and he could respond in kind. They all noticed that during the days after his friend’s appear-disappear visit, Tuba himself would vanish. But not always. This was impossible to predict, just as it was impossible to comprehend how the mustached man from Budapest always found them no matter where they happened to be working. Bizsók was puzzled, but he neither said nor asked anything. Still, he was left with a tiny ache that reminded him of something he preferred to forget. And he did not like the way the man with the mustache grinned constantly. But over his long years of work, he realized, having thought a lot about it, that the grinning friend had come with Tuba the first time so that the Gypsy would not be alone when he applied for work. Bizsók liked this in Tuba’s friend, with whom he never spoke and whose last name he had a hard time remembering.

He barely remembered the man’s first name, Gyula, because he wanted to cast it out of his memory, and that is when the name would reappear unexpectedly.

Whatever the men did, whether together or separately, they were all very careful, more so than with anything else, not to touch another man’s life, not with words or looks. This basic rule was not to be broken by anyone. Once, the day after such a violation, Bizsók told the malefactor to return his work permit; the man left immediately. Everyone knew what had happened, but in the closeness of their lives they could preserve their self-respect in the future only if no one talked about another man’s private affairs. Of course, there are unguarded movements or words with potential consequences, inadvertently open or meaningful looks that one remembers later. An error may slip into one’s interpretation that may darken another man’s face or brighten it.

Bizsók did not understand many things, but the three other Gypsies could not understand how it was that Tuba could disappear and miss two workdays with impunity. Bizsók would have fired any of the others for such a violation.

At noon, when they came back from having a couple of beers and discovered the strange items in the trailer, a similarly inexplicable thing happened, but this time among the Gypsies.

Tuba slapped Jakab on the face, hard.

And at the same time the older Téglás brother lowered his eyes; if he had not, all the emotions that goodwill and sufferance were curbing would have flared up in the darkness of those eyes. Bizsók grunted loudly. Imre Téglás began to shout and flail his arms.

He stopped instantly because his brother obviously wanted something else.

In the machine was the molten material for at least another sixteen rounds with the wheelbarrows, the tarry mix that had to be poured out at the right places before Bizsók could start with the steamroller. He kept watching his men from behind his thick glasses, but he was at a loss as to what to do.

As though his leniency with Tuba had now come to avenge itself.

Jakab threw himself, screaming and crying, on the floor of the hot trailer, not because the slap had been hard but in desperation. He denied having stolen these expensive, strange items. He kept banging his shaven head with his fist, and if they hadn’t stopped him he would have banged his head against the trailer wall.

He yelled and argued in Hungarian and in Romany, as the good Lord was his witness it wasn’t him, what did He want from him, it wasn’t he who stole, somebody else had stolen his new work clothes.

Actually nobody had accused him of anything.

But how did that expensive pair of pants wind up on the clothes rack, and that fine high-class shirt, pale-blue oxford, and where had those welted, barely used old English box* shoes come from, now under the racks, one neatly side by side with the other, that is what they all asked themselves.

And how indeed could the boy’s brand-new work clothes have disappeared at the same time, clothes he had never worn and which he so treasured he’d rather wear his uncle’s old things.

And what happened to Tuba’s rubber-soled protective boots.

It was clear to Bizsók that if he went to the local gendarmes and reported the case to the company, he’d lose three of his men in one fell swoop. Judging by the Téglás brothers’ behavior, he could expect nothing from them. But if he did not report anything, what would they do with the new shoes and expensive clothes, which could only have come from one of the vacation homes in the area, where many old-fashioned gentlemen lived. He was angry at Tuba for his arbitrariness. But the anger bursting from the other man gave him a good feeling. As if Tuba had done for him what he, Bizsók, would never do.

Not even in disciplining his own sons had he ever resorted to beating, for which he had been repeatedly reproached, and he had always been ashamed of this characteristic of his, which could be construed as a personal flaw.

Bizsók had been given back his life as a present, and therefore he was averse to bullying and violence. When trouble occurred his soul would not move; he only watched what was happening around him the more closely. He was a stout man, in height just short of what is usually called medium-tall. He wore his hair in a crew cut and he had discovered it had turned gray only when, released from captivity, he looked at a mirror for the first time in years.

He had arrived home for harvesttime; it was midday. Perhaps nobody noticed him, the village was silent, he did not find the key in the usual place. Telling this story to his men one time as they sat around the fire, he said he had not even looked at anything around the house; he washed his face and drank some water from the well and sat down on a bench on the porch. He probably didn’t fall asleep; he felt neither fatigue nor hunger, but it seemed to him that twilight followed noon almost immediately.

Then he heard women’s voices approaching on the road and a frightened child stared at him, as did a cow trudging in through the open gate.

The child ran back out and began shouting that an old beggar was sitting on their porch.

The source of laughter is not always gaiety; that is how his listeners laughed.

First he wanted to know why the key wasn’t in its place.

The others knew that his wife was a very beautiful woman and they understood that he had a distrustful and jealous nature. He always expected the worst, though until now he had shown no signs of this. The woman reached up and took the key out of a crack between the wall and the doorpost, where he could not have found it; he could only widen his eyes in astonishment. The woman opened the door, they went inside, and she immediately squatted down before the stove as she had always done.

She looked back at him from there.

But from that point he did not go on with the story for the others.

It was as if he had walked into a strange place; he hesitated. For two whole years he had not seen this person to whom he now returned, not even in his dreams.

In the morning she made dumplings rich in shortening, as if she knew exactly what he wanted.

He did tell this part to the Gypsies but kept quiet about how the two of them had finally embraced. Yet in the light of the fire, the others could easily discern on his dreamy countenance what he was bashfully holding back from them.

His face showed that night with her as he saw it through the fire.

The next day he could swing the scythe only about three times, if that, before he became so dizzy he had to lie down.

And he did not tell them that the woman poured cold water on her kerchief and rubbed his heart and wiped his forehead with it. Even in the shade he kept breaking out in waves of cold sweat.

What was to be done, he weighed only forty-seven kilos, doctors had weighed him, he told the Gypsies by way of explanation. In that condition he was hardly fit for harvesting.

In his sleep angry waves of the sea occasionally hurled themselves at him, right under his eyes.

He saw the golden brilliance of the sea before him, the ways that insistent dry winds ruffled wheat fields under an infinite sky and with their whirlpools beat down and twirled the ears of grain.

At other times the sky was dark, and sand was churned into the dully glittering waves. He had froth between his teeth. This is how the afternoon when he had first seen the sea below Husum returned to him in his sleep.

They had surrendered below Husum, in the sand dunes. Dense sharp sleet slashed their faces, and in the sudden silence the victors’ triumphant shouts carried a long way. They were rounded up like trapped animals. The fools who still tried to run away or hide somewhere were shot on the spot.

The wind instantly obliterated all footprints.

The morning when in the other trailer they sheared Jakab’s head, Bizsók was startled to wakefulness very early. A person who remembers, or whose dreams compel him not to forget, does not analyze the past. To avoid having to be grateful for the miserable life that, in his dreams, often ended in death, he got up right away. To keep the thought of being helpless to make changes from wandering about too much. He took off the top of his striped pajamas and stepped out into the open as if uninterested in what sort of day was waiting for him.

The sky was growing lighter under a gentle mist.

He put his clean enamel washbowl on the step of the trailer and poured water into it from a pitcher. In the morning, he did not use soap, only bent over the bowl and splashed some water on himself. First on his face and neck, then on his armpits and arms, a little on his back too and on his hairy chest, but these latter areas he tried to dampen without letting the water drip on his pants. He dried himself, threw the dirty water under the trailer, and stood the washbowl on the step so it could dry properly in the sun.

The empty pitcher stayed on the step; it was the boy’s job to bring fresh water.

He locked the door again. The stifling night air sat heavily in the space; hardly any light filtered through the small window. While getting dressed he could see almost nothing without his glasses. He wore his wide work pants no longer than a week but changed his underwear and shirt every other day. The shirts were all checked gingham, differing only in their colors, about as much as sun-bleached black might differ from faded blue or dull gray from washed-out brown.

János Tuba wore the same kind of shirt except he preferred to work half naked.

The bulging lenses stared at him in the dimness, because he always laid down his glasses the same way in the evening, with the temples folded in. It was autumn by the time he regained his health somewhat, and spring when he realized that although his body was strong enough, his vision had not cleared up. Since then he’d had to change his lenses twice for stronger ones; the optician was none too pleased the second time.

Where was that grumbling optician by now.

Bizsók traveled home every two weeks; from the railroad station he had to cross the marketplace on foot to the bus station, and he could stop at the optician’s place on his way. There the two young women who waited on customers wore short white smocks made of some translucent material, and they both had their hair set in a tower of layers. All the new frames were too expensive for him and not to his taste either.

His loyalty was not to his old, obviously worthless glasses but to something else he couldn’t have named.

Every morning he pulled open the drawer in the little table and took out the chamois from next to the empty payroll envelopes. His life had no more absorbing and fulfilling moments than this. He guarded his dreams with his deliberate awakening, and his dreams guarded his past. He was alert, because the fatigued material demanded caution, but he did not need to think. The act he performed was simple, but it was done among past events. Every morning he held brittle fate in his hands.

First he folded out the temples, making sure the brads were still all right. It was not a big problem if a brad became loose or fell off, since at home he had a very small hammer — he had no idea how he had got it, only watchmakers and jewelers used such an instrument, but there it was, he had it. With this hammer he was reassured about the brads. But a temple broke once, and an even more difficult situation arose when the frame around one lens cracked and then snapped.

He smeared hot tar on the uneven surface of the fracture, and when it set, he wound a thread dipped in tar around the temple, and on top of that a length of copper wire hardly thicker than the thread. The broken frame was harder to repair. With a glowing-hot steel pin, he burned holes in the plastic. It took even longer to manufacture a clip small enough to fit into the holes and hold fast on both sides.

Between two fingers he held the bridge of the glasses tight, very tight; otherwise, if he tried to do it in a gingerly way, he’d have more trouble. While cleaning the lenses with the chamois and being careful not to let the need for cleanliness become stronger than what the frame could bear, he was actually preoccupied with what was no longer humanly possible to comprehend in the inner nature of things, even though they were not a secret to anyone.

The sense of treacherously prowling dangers compels everyone to moderate their behavior, even though immoderate behavior can sometimes turn out well.

Twenty-seven men of their regiment remained in the infinite, vanishing dunes where they had been surrounded for two days. They had no place to retreat, only to the sea, and while the threat to life compelled some to surrender, it urged others to hold on and find a way to slip out of the trap. These were the last minutes of the war for them, why should they die now. At the same time they had to keep an eye on each other; and they went at each other, hissing and yelling; there was nothing left in them but endless swearing. They were careful that none of them would lose his sanity or endanger the life of a comrade. There was no place where one of them could go alone, and together with the others in this dangerous group, it also no longer made sense to venture into unfamiliar areas. They knew the sea was out there somewhere, they even felt its presence, but none of them knew what he felt about it.

A sergeant kept their spirits up. He was literally intoxicated by his heroic conduct during the hopeless battles of the previous days and by the weight of his duty to command and lead other men on the road between life and death. Fervega was the sergeant’s name. As far as he was concerned, he said, his face weary, anybody could go wherever he wanted to, but anybody staying with him must obey him. Until then they’d thought of him as a rather meek man; perhaps they had failed to notice it was restrained blind anger that made him look so drowsy, and not the lack of sleep that tortured and exhausted them all. They had nothing to eat and, more important, no potable water. And they knew they wouldn’t find any here. They did not know where they were. They had a page torn from a German school atlas but no means of orientation. They were very close to the sea in this incredibly wide, flat terrain that gave them no protection, but none of them had ever seen the sea and had no idea what feature of the terrain signaled the proximity of water. Nevertheless, first they had to leave the highway and then a dirt road, even though it was the only familiar feature of the terrain. Sergeant Fervega was a precision-instrument maker in civilian life, a man with able hands, the rest were rough-mannered peasant boys, and there was one Gypsy among them.

They must have come very close to the sea several times, but they could not distinguish the rhythmic lapping of the waves from the strong booming and whimpering wind.

Their inexperienced eyes saw ridges of desolate dunes on the horizon. They were walking in a wakeful dream.

Yet after a while Fervega realized that when they managed to go inland the wind, which held them in its grip and blustered with all its might in their ears, weakened and became more musical, as it were, and grew stronger when they came close to the water again. And something similar must have been happening with their vision. Where the water was close there was no longer any sky and no longer distinguishable clouds; it was difficult to separate visions and illusions from these unfamiliar phenomena. Still, Fervega thought it was better not to go right up to the sea with this handful of men, if only because he knew nothing of the nature of the shore or the water; but, equally, it was better if they didn’t move too far from the sea either, since it was more dangerous inland.

Eventually they would surely find some human settlement, which they should first observe from a safe distance. It would be advantageous to approach from the direction of the water. Ever since they’d been driven across the Hungarian border, following retreating German troops, they had the feeling that no matter where they wound up, even if at the edge of the map, there’d be no end to this damned Germany; they’d never get out of it.

Some of them cried whenever they stopped, even for a moment; the others had to turn away from them.

Fervega did not want them to stop.

After a spell of walking, they saw a black stone building on the desolate horizon under low-flying black clouds. As they kept walking, they saw it was a solitary building far from any human settlement. It was reminiscent of a granary on some estate, or a cathedral nave. They approached in a spread-out-chain formation, alternately ducking and straightening up, hoping to find a well, and a fire so they could at least dry themselves. Near the building, where the movement of the air seemed to change, they thought they heard disconnected snatches of the hum of voices or some church melody. It reminded some of them of a beehive buzzing or the drone of a distant marketplace.

But at least the building had a well, as they saw from a little closer up.

All this happened in the afternoon of the previous day. Fervega only motioned to them; they knew what to do in order to gain the well.

Letting out an enormous roar, Fervega kicked in the building’s arched, hewn and carved oak door, which was barely closed anyway; Bizsók, with his weapon at the ready, stood to the right of the sergeant, while the others surrounded the building on all sides. The building had no other opening from which someone could attack them. A man trying to quench his thirst was defenseless. Except maybe high up, from the windows with their broken panes. The building must have burned from the inside for a while, but the flames had not reached the windowpanes. If they wanted to drink, they first had to take over the place. Bizsók and Fervega each fired a round and heard the impact of the bullets. At first they could see nothing beyond the swinging door. They saw their own dread in the darkness and felt an ominous heat that commanded them to halt. Inside, there was only the light that came in through rips and cracks in the seriously damaged roof.

It was getting dark.

A terrible stench hit them unexpectedly, assailing their noses with warmth, but they comprehended only much later with their minds what they felt and saw then. Which was accompanied by many terrible independent little sounds. Rattling in the throat, frenzied laments that sounded not like crying but like some sort of lullaby, a persistent whimpering farther off and shouting at the border of consciousness.

In this long split second, they became truly defenseless; anyone could have killed them.

They were standing in the buzzing beehive of a singing traumatic fever.

They did not go in, but they could see that these wrecks were Germans. A single glance was enough. On the bare brick floor lay the most seriously wounded evacuees of a field hospital, left to their fate. Some lay on stretchers among the dead, just where their escaping carriers had freed themselves of their burdens.

The water in the well tasted of carrion.

He personally would shoot anyone who dared to drink of it, the sergeant whispered menacingly, planting himself by the bucket of bad water.

They didn’t have much time for discussion because they discovered that behind the building and not very far off was a road. And on it now appeared enemy tanks; the road could not have been more than five hundred meters away. So the building could serve them only as a temporary hiding place; under cover of night they might be able to move on. While they stood by the well talking about this, at the same time keeping an eye on the moving enemy tanks, through the oak door left wide open slid a human clump, blackened by mud and excrement. Both his legs had been amputated at the knees and the bandages were soaked bloody or black. He kept turning on his stomach and then on his back, the only way he could inch forward, like a caterpillar.

They stood there, with thirst and unfinished sentences in their mouths, watching him. When his trunk flipped onto its back, it remained motionless. As if he wanted to sit up; he was alive.

Beyond the distant artillery fire twilight was reddening the sky darkened by clouds, but the muzzle fire of the guns no longer sounded. Seagulls were screeching above. Anticipating the eating of live human flesh. The men wanted to turn away but didn’t know where to look. The sergeant gave a resounding order; they must dredge the well.

The sense of this not even the passively distant sky could see. Ever since they had set out in search of an escape route, starving, thirsty, drenched, and weeping, the sergeant had let not one minute pass without issuing a command.

Then with long strides he started toward the wounded man and, while somebody finally, reluctantly, began to carry out that last command which made so little sense, he reached under the German’s shoulders and dragged him back to the wall of the building. The wounded man kept shouting in pain; his head flopped back; his blind features stared into the sergeant’s face. Still, Fervega saw that the man expected something from him that no one else did. Maybe he wanted water, maybe he was begging for death in the foreign language that could still struggle up from his dried throat to his sore-ridden lips.

They were all from the Alföld, they did not understand a single word in any foreign language.

Someone near Bizsók growled, then mumbled, if you’re not going to do it, I’ll shoot him, Fervega.

But Fervega did not reply; with his eyes on the tanks on the road, he said, those can’t be anybody but either the British or the Americans.

Give the order, said the former hoarsely.

This made those soldiers stop who until now had been checking the well with a long rod for a possible corpse or carrion.

The well was not very deep, and they told Fervega they weren’t finding anything with this kind of search.

The wounded man leaning against the wall was silent but alive.

By the time it was dark, one of the men could be lowered into the well to dig out the muddy bottom with his combat shovel under the beam of a flashlight. Nobody asked how long it would be before fresh water would bubble up.

By the time it was dark, another three soldiers and the sergeant had carried the dead bodies out from among the dying in the building.

The sergeant spared Bizsók this job. Before the darkness became too deep he sent Bizsók with two men on a scouting mission. These men had not parted company in the last few days; they slept in the warmth of one another’s bodies.

In the reflected light of the distant heavy guns, the barren terrain appeared to them in quick successive flashes. Which filled the darkness with the illusion of a mute landscape.

Now this one, now another one tripped on solitary clumps of grass.

Bizsók was in front. He was bothered by the thought that they might never find their way back to the others. And if they did, what possible news would they have but that they hadn’t seen anything in the dark. The wind hurled sharp grains of sand and fine mist in their faces. Pauses in the squalls were filled with the booming of distant armies on the move. But no matter how close they came, the moving troops were not visible. Fighting units have to move slowly, with dim lights; tanks were rumbling. Panting, the three men groped their way forward in the noise but could not reach those dimmed lights.

Then Bizsók realized he would never see a road or any dimmed lights because what lay ahead was the sea.

In the dim flash of the muzzle fire he could see only another infinite stretch of barren terrain, no matter how fiercely he stared ahead. Or was it fog. By now the wind was whipping at them from all directions, and as it blew through their clothes, water dripped down their faces. He bent low because he felt a change under his feet; water was seeping from the wet sand in his hand. It threw froth on his face and body. What they could not see was raging right before them.

He smeared wet sand over his face. His mates could not see his weakness.

Small noises could be heard from the other trailer that morning, followed by muffled words, hitherto unheard-of thumping sounds, stamping of feet and the din of hurried activity.

A tension-filled silence ensued.

He did not eavesdrop but simply listened to the quality of the silence. He put the chamois back in the drawer and with ceremonious fussiness placed his glasses on his nose.

They decided that one of them would stay at the spot where they reached the sea. If he sensed no danger, every few minutes he would give two dim signals with his flashlight. They called the flashlight cat’s-eyes because it had no batteries; it worked with a hand-pressure-operated dynamo until its fine little carbon brushes wore out. That is how the other two reassured themselves that they could find their way back to their comrade. And they proceeded northward along the shore in the direction of where they assumed the town of Husum to be. The wind was blowing in their eyes from that quarter. Bizsók learned much later, in the Hamburg POW camp, that they should have gone in the opposite direction.

When they turned around the first time they could still see it; when they turned around the second time they could no longer make out the pale blinking of the cat’s-eyes in the darkness filled with the sound of roaring waves.

Every morning his story ended differently, and the next morning it continued in yet another way. Once he had the spectacles on his nose, the sharpened sight of his surroundings made the feelings guarded by his dreams vanish. Before going to make his bed in strict military fashion, he lingered for a few seconds by the small table. He did not clasp his hands and his lips did not move, but he was praying. Always the same thing, the Lord’s Prayer. He prayed that he might see Fervega again. The Lord’s Prayer suited him because he didn’t have to pay attention to the sequence of words; while reciting them he could think of things he was forbidden to think about. At times the prayer carried him across great distances; the words were free to meditate on themselves.

Now he would turn to the Father as a faithful son, now he himself would be the Father who had to take care of the son. His feeling had nothing to do with gratitude. With his prayer he neither asked nor expressed gratitude for anything; perhaps, rather, he gave something. That is how he offered himself up to whatever was yet to come.

But never again could he fill the space that had been emptied. There was no fairness or equality in the name of which he could drag another man’s bed in there.

When they finally fell into captivity, the British first took them to a small town called Pfeilen. There was a tall Hungarian among the British, one András Rott, a dark-haired young man who was able to talk to them.

He consoled them; boys, relax, everything will be all right.

He saw a sign of his aging in what he missed so terribly. On that summer morning, guaranteed to turn into a scorcher, he forgot the Lord’s Prayer. The cloudless clear sky had not promised relief for weeks. Heaven, where the Father was supposed to dwell, had no outer form, and it did not have the color of the sky either. It could not be blue, and dark clouds could not move across it with the wind. When he uttered that word, heaven, he saw the kind of sky Catholics paint on the ceilings of their churches. At other times he saw nothing, but the lack did not bother him, because he had no doubt the word spoke of an invisible beauty. But now the word in his mouth turned into something he had to spit out immediately. It reminded him most of the sand with the smell of algae and shells he had just wiped off his lips. As if some unequivocal whispering in his ear were saying that, contrary to what he had thought until now, there is more than one heaven and the number of Fathers is countless.

But he could not contemplate things like this, could not even imagine them.

The tension-filled silence in the other trailer that alerted Bizsók also awakened Tuba. He lay on his stomach, his head sunk on a pillow. He was not a man who scared easily, yet a spasm coursed through his softly resting body, first making his skin realize that something extraordinary was happening, and only then making him open his eyes, alarmed. He saw what he saw, which made his entire body become covered in goose bumps, but his muscles were still asleep in the warmth under his blanket.

There was more light in this trailer than in the other one, its small window gave on the water, the mirror of the river water hurled up on the ceiling the light it received from the sun rising in the vaporous mist.

Dark spots trembled in the light, the ethereal shadows of poplars.