Ábel was happy to make an exception of his aunt and hid his indifference and rebellion behind shows of affection. His aunt however sensed that behind this show Ábel was only forgiving her as a favor.
“I’m not taken by that Ernõ either,” she suddenly announced. “He’s after something, my child, I’m sure of it. His father is quite crazy too. Someone must have hammered one of his own hobnails through his head. And I don’t like the way Lajos laughs. One should forgive him because he has suffered much, but whenever he grins at me for no reason I feel cold shivers run up my spine. Be careful, my sweet one and only. Think of your father. Your father could get to the bottom of anything and knew the reason for everything. He’d be able to look into the eyes of your friend Zakarka and quickly discover what he was up to. He’d know why young Prockauer has taken to flashing smiles at people. I wouldn’t trust Béla either. His face is lined as if he spent his nights up to God knows what, it’s as yellow as parchment and full of spots. They’re whited sepulchers, all of them, darling. Mark my words. And by the way, where is your father’s violin? I’ve been looking for it for days. When he returns it’s the first thing he’ll want to find.”
Ábel didn’t know. He couldn’t tell his aunt that the violin had for weeks been resting in their bolt-hole at The Peculiar and that Béla, who knew not a note of music but could imitate the virtuosos he had never seen to perfection, would entertain them with silent performances on it. He had to pay a forfeit every time he dared touch the strings with the bow.
Now there’s your friend, Tibor, his aunt continued. Do you know what I like about him? I like the way he looks at me. Have you noticed how he blushes sometimes? When I address him he raises his eyes and blushes. And it’s a good sign when a boy blushes. And he has manners too. His father gave him a strict upbringing.
She would have been prepared to share him, but couldn’t bear to admit to herself that there was nothing left to share. Ábel, who had once been hers, was lost to her. The house was big and empty now. The town too seemed emptier without the men. Life no longer had a single comprehensive meaning for her. Ábel lowered his eyes whenever she spoke to him. She had noticed how often, reluctantly, possibly out of pity, he lied to her. He lied to her as if he didn’t want the truth to hurt her. And since she dared not investigate the lies she hastened to accept what the boy said.
The scent of Ábel’s childhood slowly faded from the rooms. Both of them went round trying to hang on to the lingering trail of it, searching for the life that had gone, the intimacy of the looks they had once cast on each other, the affection once implicit in their gestures. She gave in, and like all those who recognize some major mistake in their lives, found a calm indifference settling on her. The boy had, in some sense, been abducted. Some similar force had taken his father too. The meaning of her life had drifted away from her.
Ábel hovered around Tibor with a bad conscience. Ever since the actor had entered their lives the bond between them was fraught with tension and anxiety. Sometimes he was seized by such fierce jealousy that there were afternoons and nights when he had to slip out of his room, trudge over to Tibor’s house, and stand beneath the window to assure himself that Tibor was at home. Other times he would set up watch outside the actor’s house when the performances were over. He’d wait for hours for the actor to arrive, his heart in his mouth as he spied on him, feeling ashamed and yet relieved as he sneaked home again.
He endeavored to separate Tibor from the rest of the gang so that he could be alone with him. This experiment was all the more painful as he knew that Tibor found him dull company. Ábel worked with feverish enthusiasm to find amusements for Tibor. He dragged the secrets of home and hearth before him, hastened to bring him gifts, did his homework for him, got his aunt to cook him her special meals. He played the piano for him. He was more than willing to master the secrets of boxing, high jump, and gymnastics in order to amuse Tibor. He found various shy excuses to share his money with him and when, egged on by the gang, Tibor later executed the grand coup of pawning the family silver, he accompanied Tibor the entire length of the hazardous route. Perhaps if he were a direct witness to Tibor’s fall from grace he might gain some power over him. Perhaps he could be such a close accomplice in Tibor’s fall from grace that, if they had to sin and suffer, at least they might sin and suffer together.
Tibor found his company dull. He was careful to show his boredom nicely, with delicacy and good manners as Ábel noted to his despair. He talked in order to please him and got hold of books in order that Ábel might explain their contents to him.
A copy of Kuprin’s The Duel lay on Ábel’s desk.
“Incomprehensible and dull, isn’t it?” Tibor politely remarked. Ábel searched feverishly for an answer but gave up and fell silent, his head bowed.
“Incomprehensible and dull,” he said and stared ahead, stricken with guilt.
What did it matter that he had betrayed the spirits of great writers to gain Tibor’s favor? A volume of the humor magazine Fidibus lay on the shelf. Tibor reached over for it with considerable enthusiasm. Ábel observed and suffered as Tibor leafed slowly through pages of smutty jokes, carefully explaining them to him, feeling nervous in the presence of material of whose existence he had heard only by vague report. What could he give Tibor? Whenever they were separated he felt lost and hurt. He prepared himself for their meetings and tried to invent something new and surprising for each occasion. Meanwhile Tibor yawned discreetly, his hand covering his mouth.
He was distressed to feel so stupid, so inadequate to the honor of being Tibor’s companion. He examined himself in front of the mirror. His ginger hair, his myopic eyes, his freckled face, his scrawny body and bad posture made a painful spectacle compared to Tibor, who was fresh-faced, tall, refined yet certain in movement, held his head well, his eyes full of mild haughtiness and self-confidence, his expression conveying a raw yet delicate childishness.
He is my friend, thought Ábel, a hot sweet flush of gratitude running through him. He looks wonderful, he sometimes thought as if for the first time and felt the incomprehensible, agonizing shock of it all over again. He tried to entice Tibor into his own secret world. Tibor gazed with interest at Ábel’s house, taking in the courtyard, the garden, the secrets of the hidey-hole, and all the treasures of the vanished kingdom, while Ábel tried to conjure up for him the world of fairy tales and toys he had lived with in the glazed conservatory. Tibor followed him around, courteous and mildly bored. They talked of girls but Ábel sensed they were both lying. They competed in telling each other ever more lewd imagined adventures, not daring to look each other in the eye. They bragged of several lovers, extraordinary, quite remarkable sweethearts with whom—secretly of course—they were still in touch.
They were talking like this in the garden one day when Ábel suddenly fell silent in the middle of a story.
“It’s a lie,” he said and stood up.
Tibor also stood up, his face pale.
“What do you mean?”
“Every word I have ever spoken about girls was a lie. Not a word of it is true, not one. And you’re lying too. Admit it, you’re lying. Come on. Own up. Tibor, you are lying, aren’t you?”
They were both trembling. Ábel seized Tibor’s hand.
“Yes,” Tibor reluctantly confessed. “I’m lying.”
He freed his hand.
Ábel wanted to share his memories of his father with Tibor. For his father was only a memory now, a confusing figure shrouded in mist, adrift between the concepts of godhead and death. This was the one area where Tibor appeared to follow him with pleasure and enthusiasm. They exchanged memories of their fathers, of their first fears and of every little incident that continued to linger in their minds, glimmering there forever like distant shining myths. Tibor recounted his shock on discovering a fish-bladder condom in his father’s bedside-table drawer and described in some confusion—and with evident pain—his despair the first time his father failed to keep a promise and told a lie
. He had run away with Lajos that day to hide in the stable at the barracks and felt so desperate he wanted to die.
They had no difficulty talking about their fathers. Their fathers were at the root of every difficulty: they were insincere, they refused to give straight answers, they wouldn’t say what they were suffering. The skies around their heavenly thrones had darkened to a gray shower of disappointments. The only way they could make proper peace with their fathers, suggested Ábel, would be eventually to form a pact with them.
I don’t think that’s possible, shuddered Tibor. Mine might just shoot me. He is in the mood for it. And he’d be perfectly entitled to, I think. If he came home tomorrow and failed to find the silverware or the saddle…What do you think it would be like if yours came back?
Ábel closed his eyes. His father’s return would be an extraordinary ceremonial occasion, something between a royal funeral and the emperor’s birthday. Bells would no doubt be rung as he marched in, then he’d sit down at the table, deplore the loss of his violin, and look for certain scissors and tweezers. Ábel would enter and stand before him.
“Delighted to see you, sir,” he would say and make a low bow. At that point all hell would break loose. Perhaps his father would raise his hand and hurl thunderbolts at him. But it might be that he would walk up to him and there would be an anxious moment while he considered the possibility of taking him in his arms, embracing him, and kissing him. So they would stare at each other, uncertain what to do.
“Maybe he will apologize,” ventured Ábel.
“Or else shoot me,” Tibor repeated obstinately.
THE CRISIS CAME TO A HEAD AT THE BEGINNING of October. Béla’s father conducted an audit and discovered the missing sums. They were small amounts at first and nobody thought to suspect Béla.
The first consequence of the discovery was that a sixteen-year-old apprentice boy was hauled before the court and sentenced to two years in juvenile detention.
The giant buildings of the house of correction rose beside the road that led to The Peculiar and whenever they retired to their hidden empire they were forced to pass by its outer perimeter. The lights of the windows of the correctional institution shone directly at them as they made their way back at night. The enormous red-brick hulks were visible behind high railings where a guard stood sentry at the entrance.
The hearings were concluded and Béla’s father sighed with relief that his staff and family members were found to be honest. Only they knew that the avalanche had started. The petty infringements discovered by the father, for which the boy rather than Béla was sent to be institution-alized—the apprentice having, to everyone’s surprise, admitted his guilt and spent little time denying anything—were insignificant compared to the “real” crime, Béla’s great break-in. These true facts were liable to be discovered any day. Should they be discovered, they would all be lost.
This possibility did not appeal to the actor either, he having been accepted into the gang so recently. Nevertheless he took the news of Béla’s crime with equanimity and did not blame any of them since he too had enjoyed a fair share of the money. If it were up to him, he said, he would settle the difference from his own pocket. Unfortunately it wasn’t up to him.
Béla had stolen six hundred crowns in one go, six one-hundred-crown bills. His father had sent him down to the post office with the money to post an order to one of his business acquaintances. Béla kept the money and simply told his father that he had sent it but could not find the receipt. The intended recipient, a rice merchant, was bound to claim the money a few days later and then they would all be lost.
What was strange was that Béla had not mentioned this vast sum to the gang. They had long got used to the fact that he always carried smaller amounts with him. Those hundreds seemed to have melted away in Béla’s pocket. When they interrogated him about it, it turned out that the actor who had complained of certain minor inconveniences had received a sum of two hundred crowns in three installments from Béla. The tailor’s bill was also rather more substantial than they had thought. Béla had kept the final invoice from the others, and when the tailor turned awkward, threatening to send it to his father, he paid what was owing.
The money had vanished, as Béla calmly declared, every last cent of it. With the last thirty crowns he had purchased, perfectly calmly, a revolver that they took from him by force and entrusted to Ernõ’s safe keeping. Béla’s behavior during all this was perfectly apathetic: he lost weight and his face seemed to collapse. He was preparing to die.
The gang held long extraordinary discussions that went on day and night. They had to produce the money in twenty-four hours and send it by telegram to Béla’s father’s business partner before irreparable harm was caused. Ábel performed miracles with his aunt, charming and bewitching her, but he could conjure no more than forty crowns from her.
It was at this time that they inducted the actor into the secrets of The Peculiar too. The actor accompanied them with a puzzled yet faintly bored smile, never denying that he had received money from Béla, shrugging his shoulders, for how should he have known where the money was from. I thought you were all rich, he said and gazed straight ahead as if in a dream.
They were not rich but their “warehouse,” as Ernõ referred to the store at The Peculiar, might possibly offer a few solutions. That was how the actor came to be there at the moment of mortal danger. All hands on deck, said the actor, and pretended to be the captain of a sinking ship giving his last orders. There was a time, somewhere between Naples and Marseille…, he said. He was made to swear to keep the secrets of The Peculiar on pain of death.
The actor was happy enough to swear, his only condition being that he should be able to wear a frock coat and that the table should be prepared with four burning candles. He entered the secret room nervously, his face showing no interest, without removing his gloves, his hat still on his head, and stood in the middle of the room, sniffing the air like a connoisseur and declaring in a frostily polite voice and with a stiff, unsmiling expression: Charming! He brightened when he spotted the store of clothes. They had to dress up there and then. He gave tiny cries of delight as he knotted neckties, forgetting the frosty politeness and show of indifference with which he had entered, took a step or two backward, and produced the most exquisite effects with a movement of his eyebrow. They were not going to make any progress with the problem of Béla that afternoon. They were all infected by the actor’s enthusiasm. Béla dressed and undressed with a desperate concentration, throwing on one item after another, while the actor delved drunkenly into the store of neckties, silk shirts, and cosmetics that Béla had so thoughtfully and skillfully accumulated. Once they were all strutting around in costumes the actor spread his arms like the conductor of an orchestra, took a step backwards, and with a serious, concerned expression examined each of them in turn, then, his head set back, under half-closed lids, summed up his general impression: “You should all be on stage,” he said. And after a short meditative pause: “In an amateur sense, I mean.”
They too felt they should be on stage. The utter impossibility of their ambition depressed them. “With an invited audience…,” suggested the actor. “Without written parts, of course. Everyone would be free to say whatever came into his head.” With the actor to encourage them in their strange costumes they suddenly marveled at their wealth. The problem was that the treasure trove of inestimable value that they had amassed was worth very little in ready cash. They sneaked back into town that evening feeling they were doomed. As they were preparing to part, Lajos waved Tibor over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“The silver,” he said.
“The silver?” asked the actor, pricking up his ears. “What silver? If you have silver everything can be fixed.”
He pronounced this with such authority that they fell silent, quite awestruck. They knew what silver. The silver that lay in a leather trunk under the bed of the colonel’s wife! Only the actor had been ignorant of the silver, and now t
he solution was perfectly clear to him.
“As long as the silver is really there,” he repeated anxiously. “I’ll have a word with Havas. He is a friend of mine and knows all about silver.”
“What did you think would happen?” Tibor slowly turned to Béla, speaking with childishly clear enunciation, breaking the words up into syllables. His voice was full of infinite wonder. “What did you think you would do? You must have known they would discover the loss.”
They stood on the street corner in the light of a gas lamp, forming a tight dark group. It was at this moment that Béla’s self-control deserted him.
“Think? Me?!” he declared with great indignation. “I didn’t think anything. How could I have thought at all? No. And you?” he hesitated as if he were deeply astounded by something. “Did any of you think at all, at any time?”
And this was exactly what had to be said at that precise moment, in the first moment of sanity they had experienced for months; this was what had to be said in order to set Tibor’s question in the real world and expose the unreality of their own actions. It was a question their fathers might have asked, or the mayor, or anyone at all, anyone except Tibor. For the first time they understood that the world they had constructed around themselves, that sheltered them, would collapse about their ears if they broke one single law of the real one.
Conveniently, the colonel’s wife had to be taken into the hospital for two days of observation so Ábel and Tibor took the silver and handed it over to Havas. Béla managed to transfer the money to the merchant with a certain regret, as if he could think of better uses for it. Afterwards Ábel insisted they should visit the apprentice boy who was serving Béla’s sentence for him.
Béla had only the faintest memory of the boy. Once they received their visitors’ permits and, deeply embarrassed, had laden themselves with fruits and other foodstuffs, they waited for him in the reception room of the correctional institute in a state of ever greater anxiety and restlessness. Through the windows they could see the workshops where other inmates labored—the joinery, the locksmith’s, and the bakery—while a detachment of blue-uniformed others puttered about between the long flower beds, attended by a guard. There were quite a few there and each year of the war produced its fresh harvest of them. They gazed at the bars on the dormitory block windows, the bleak hall where they themselves silently loitered, the benches covered with waxed canvas and the single crucifix on the wall. This house of correction was specifically set aside for those who shared their own world and they had never felt so keenly divided from the world and society of adults as they did in the minutes they spent there. They were forced to see that while they played and—half consciously, half unconsciously—built their own society like a cell within adult society, theirs was just one cell of the real world. They understood that there existed not just a cell but a whole world like theirs, a world whose laws, ethics, and structure differed sharply from that of the adults, and that this world had a dynamic that was equal to the one in which adults struggled and perished, that had its own hierarchies and mysterious coherence. They couldn’t help feeling that there was a logic behind all that they had done these last few years. It might have been their task, their vocation, to maintain the principle of everything-for-its-own-sake. They huddled closer together and gazed sympathetically through the window at all those unknown others of their kind.