“My father has principles! I have none!” He was reeling with laughter. “If only he could see me here…”
“Box two was better,” said Ábel. “That was our box, number two on the right. Tibor, if only your father could see you now! Careful, your skirt is riding up.”
Tibor sat up and smoothed his skirt down. Ábel addressed him most solemnly.
“Have you ever read poems with cotton wool in your ears? Or prose, for that matter…It’s quite different, you know. You should try it some time…”
The actor fished in his pocket for a contraption that looked a little like a pocket watch and splashed perfume on his palms and cheeks. The cloud of sickening chypre enveloped Tibor too.
“A proper sailor likes his scents,” said the actor. “His pockets and his chest are full of gifts for his friends and brides.”
So saying he dipped in his pocket again and brought out a small hand-mirror, a comb, some cakes of soap, and ceremoniously handed them round. What was left of the chypre he poured all over Tibor.
THERE WERE CONTRARY STORIES AS TO WHAT happened later. Ernõ asserted that everyone, with the exception of the actor, who had in fact drunk the most, was drunk. The actor was only pretending. The one-armed one obstinately maintained that the actor was genuinely and helplessly drunk because there was that embarrassing moment when he touched him with his fingertip and the actor collapsed like a sack.
What they all remembered was that round about dawn the actor made an interminable torrent of a speech and behaved most strangely. He walked up and down waving his arms and told ridiculous stories in a mixture of languages. No one the next day could remember what he actually said. He kept mentioning the names of foreign cities, made grandiloquent gestures at the dark auditorium, and shouted obscene remarks into it. There was one time when they were all speaking at once. The one-armed one was weeping and staggering around. He went from person to person, tapping each on the arm and pointing to the space where his missing arm should have been. “There’s yours,” he said, “but where is mine?” He wept, sat down on the ground, and felt about himself. “There must be a mistake,” he pleaded. “Help me look for it. It must be here somewhere.” They stood around not knowing what to do. They tried whispering soothing things into his ear. He was impossible to console or calm. He screamed and shouted and started vomiting. They washed his face. Tibor sat down with him and laid his brother’s head in his lap. The one-armed one was twitching, his whole body racked with tears.
“More,” advised the actor. “Give him more drink. Crying is just a stage you go through. Let’s see where this leads!”
They drank straight from the bottle, the actor disappearing from time to time, returning with more bottles. He obviously had a supply at hand. Ernõ bellowed over the chaos:
“Where did you get the money?”
They stared at each other in the unexpected silence. True enough. How could he afford all this? The actor was known to be stingy with money. Now he grinned.
“You’re my friends…,” he said. “What does it matter? Think of me as your patron…” He lurched over to the prompter’s box. “Ladies and gentlemen…Behold Maecenas…patron of the arts…for my little friends…”
He reeled about, laughing.
“Let there be music!” he declared.
He pulled a gramophone from one of the trunks and with uncertain fingers put a record on.
“Hush, needle,” he cajoled. “Hush. Let’s dance.”
He stood up straight, stepped over to Tibor, and made a bow. The one-armed one scrambled to his feet.
“Look in the trunk,” he said. “The trunk.”
The record was playing so quietly that at first they did not hear it. The actor swept Tibor into his arms and began to dance with him.
Ábel followed them, somewhat ill at ease. The actor was dancing properly, as if he hadn’t drunk anything, dancing as if it were the most natural form of locomotion for him, as if his heavy body were rendered weightless, mercilessly dragging Tibor along with him, barely perceptibly lifting him with both arms. The music was so quiet and slow that for some time the two caught up in the dance were the only ones to hear it. It was a mewling, selfpitying kind of tune, with much rubato, the rhythm broken up, and the actor was performing a hitherto unknown kind of dance to it, improvising sweeping gestures, taking Tibor with him. His face was solemn now, almost pious. It seemed to Ábel as he trailed them that the actor was staring deep into Tibor’s eyes. Both of them were highly serious as they danced, disciplined in opposition, staring each other out, not turning away their heads, not even for a second. The two pairs of eyes were watching each other with such anxiety, such close attention it seemed to be vital not to let the other out of sight as their feet and bodies swayed. They kept their necks stiff, head and neck indifferent to the dipping and rising of the torso. How does Tibor know how to dance? thought Ábel. Perhaps he was simply allowing his helpless body to be guided by the actor who had caught him up in his own orbit, Tibor following wherever he was led. Where was this dance leading? They were moving slowly in constant, calm, even patterns as the record wound down. The actor released Tibor and the boy put his hand to his forehead, staggering and grasping at the air before him as if he needed something to hold on to. He stood there, his hand raised, waiting for the actor to return, and it seemed to Ábel that he was not entirely in control of himself. The actor meanwhile was back at the gramophone, putting on another record.
This one was louder. The one-armed one stopped whimpering. The actor seized Tibor and swept him into an ever faster rhythm, occasionally slowing and hesitating, holding back. Ábel felt the pair were stating oppositions in their dance, resisting its true momentum. The actor held Tibor at such a great, precise distance from himself, he was like someone fastidiously carrying a weight over a deep crevice, a feat of considerable strength but one that clearly showed the effort required. In both music and dance there was a latent progress towards some rapidly approaching, desired, irresistible event, a restrained intensification as the actor danced into a circle of light and remained there, not moving out of it, not for a second. Béla stood beside the gramophone, adjusting the needle, winding the mechanism. They did not change the record. The actor stopped between two bars, stopped for a second, let go of Tibor, and in a single movement pulled off his vest and disposed of his wig, throwing it high into the catwalk.
He danced on half-naked. His heavy breasts shook with each maneuver and his bare back shimmered like pale bacon in the spotlight. The actor now tried a new movement, drawing almost imperceptibly closer to Tibor so that without actually touching they were still dancing body-to-body, with an all-but-invisible synchronicity that seemed to join them ever more firmly with each step. It was as if a veil were winding about them, one that tightened with each turn, becoming so tight it was impossible to push against. It was as if it were dictating the pace of the music, so that it was the record that was speeding up with them, growing more tense and excited, clicking over the grooves.
The one-armed one scrambled to his feet again and stole up behind Ábel, craning forward, gazing at the dance. Ábel felt uncomfortable like that and stepped away, but the one-armed one reached for him, squeezed his shoulder, and whispered: “Turn off the music!”
But before Ábel could respond something happened, something that struck them as so sudden and unexpected that for a moment they could do no more than stare without moving, as if they were witnessing some extraordinary natural phenomenon.
The music had finished and the needle continued scraping at the still-turning record but no one paid attention to that. The actor took one more turn with his partner, then he too stopped still, leaning over a little to one side, then freezing like a statue depicting a figure caught in movement. They stood there, both of them, tipping to one side, unmoving in the glare of the lights, a tableau vivant, an allegorical embodiment of “The Dance,” clear and appropriate. The actor had one foot off the ground, his upper body strongly leaning the way t
he momentum of the dance had taken him. The statue slowly came to life, balancing itself by spreading its feet, moving its arms to raise and support Tibor whose head was cocked back as if he were looking up. The actor’s vast equine head fell forward, his mouth hovered over Tibor’s. Very slowly, as if having to overcome an invisible resistance, as if reluctantly and yet inevitably, the mouth moved with due care and regard to cover Tibor’s. The boy’s head fell back under the weight. Their lips were joined and did not part as the actor with one hand supported the head that had collapsed beneath his, the head powerless, the eyes closed.
Ábel and the one-armed one both leapt on them at once. Béla made a kind of barking noise and attacked the actor’s feet, using both his hands to try and topple the colossus, but the enormous body stood so firm on the great pillars of its legs that for a while they were incapable of shifting it. Ábel got hold of Tibor’s neck and pulled it back with such force that they both fell. They rolled over and over, ending up under the table and remaining there for a second tangled in each other without moving. Tibor was torn from the actor helpless and corpselike, as if released from a powerful magnetic force field, falling weightless, ejected from its ambit. Béla kept tugging at the actor’s legs like an angry dog, whining and grunting. The one-armed one let go of the actor, leapt forward, and smashed his fist into the back of his head. The figure slowly collapsed. It was like downing an enormous effigy.
Ernõ stood at the edge of the stage shielding his eyes with his hands, straining to look into the dark.
There’s someone out there, he cried.
They froze in their places. The one-armed one was the first to crawl slowly across the body of the fallen actor, joining Ernõ. The cobbler’s son leaned far out into the auditorium and pointed his trembling stick to a dark and distant box at top balcony level. There was someone sitting at the back of the box. Béla approached, his teeth chattering. Ernõ’s voice resounded in a high screech through the hall.
There’s someone out there! Look! And he’s been there for some time!
But no one was capable of moving. Out of the silence, in the impenetrable dark, at the back of the box, a chair toppled over and a door slammed shut.
4
THE COLONEL’S WIFE STOPPED BETWEEN THE two beds. She was carrying Tibor’s black uniform on her arm, and held the brilliantly polished black lace-up shoes in her hand. She came on tiptoe and, still on tiptoe, stopped on swollen, unsteady feet in the half-dark. The square window glimmered between the beds. She gave both beds a furious, feral glance, shifting her attention from one to the other and back.
Lajos lay propped high on his pillow, as stiff and unmoving as a corpse. His remaining hand rested on his chest, the sleeve of the missing arm hanging off the edge of the bed, his face calm, serious, smooth. Tibor lay slightly across his bed, one foot sticking out from beneath the covers, his hand gripping the bolster.
The colonel’s wife raised the clothes to her face with difficulty and took a good sniff. The boy’s smell was detectable through that of the broadcloth and the cheap perfume that had lingered round him on his return that night. So there it is, she thought. The boy has spent the night with some woman.
Incontrovertible proof, she thought. The boy has been with a woman, doing what all men do. That was the odor he brought back with him, on his body and his clothes, while she was stuck at home, waiting up in her bed, with her straggly hair let down over her skinny shoulders, in her nightgown, imagining the most terrible things, weeping and sobbing because she could just see him as a man, his angular head nestling between an unknown woman’s breasts, his groin rubbing against the woman’s groin, the woman who was robbing her of her motherhood, disputing her ownership of the family. That was what really mattered, what she should never forget: that she had been robbed. They are all thieves, she reflected with contempt. That’s how it was in her most agonizingly jealous years too: she was being robbed. This furtive miserliness that had held the family together, a family that was continually straining to break apart, whose members were always set on wandering off, always resented and coveted anything her menfolk took from the house, every farthing, each drop of blood. Everything here belonged to her because it was she who kept guard over the family, indeed was the family, an island in the greater world outside, an island on which they built houses and settled people—all of this was hers, everything that grew here grew out of her flesh and blood. But the men went straying after other women. They were robbing her, so she was jealous of every word the three men took with them when they left the house. They gave money to other women, fed them with endearments that were hers by right: their very movements, their blood and sweat, were offered up to them. One day they all deserted her, left the island, gave false, conniving excuses for their absence, citing the call of duty, the needs of the nation, the binding oaths they had made, and when they came back they were never the same again. One came back without an arm. She looked at the empty dangling sleeve. That arm was unquestionably hers: she had given birth to it. That was her flesh the boy had squandered somewhere. He said it was the war, but she knew these were just words, that men made war just to escape their homes, because they didn’t want to fulfill their obligations and earn a proper living.
The little one had slept with a woman last night. She leaned forward carefully and her eyes sought out her son’s mouth in the half-dark of the bolsters. The mouth was open, the lips swollen with blood. His father had just such a mouth. That’s how it goes, how it always goes, one is left alone on a sinking island.
She arranged the clothes on the chair. She knew she was nearing the end of her life, and was quite aware she had to die. It might be a year, it might be tomorrow. Her foot was swollen and dropsical. There were nights she couldn’t hear her own heart beat. She was accustomed to the thought of death and spoke of it as she might speak of a much-loved, intimate family occasion. She had no difficulty accepting the thought of death, she was only concerned that her sons would come in, call for the doctor and Mrs. Budenyik, the woman who washed corpses, and Mrs. Budenyik would strip her and wash her wasted body and swollen dead legs, those legs that had died before her sensations and reason did, with acidic water. She had no intention whatever of intruding upon Mrs. Budenyik and her business with the dead. Mrs. Budenyik had been a midwife once, and had seen her naked and more than naked when she gave birth to her sons. She was part of the family, first as an associate member of the great family of woman, secondly as a member of Colonel Prockauer’s family. She was the last to wash Granny and the first to wash little Tibor. It’s laughable, she thought, that Mrs. Budenyik should complete her work here, prepare her nice and clean for her final journey, wipe the death sweat off her with a cloth soaked in acidic water, not allowing the boys to remain in the room as she did so. The thought that tortured her was that the boys would be allowed to remain, maybe out of pity, or for lack of a firm hand, while Mrs. Budenyik washed her down. This fear never left her during the period of her illness while she lay helpless in bed. She knew why the boys should not look upon her naked body, alive or dead, it made no difference. She wore high-necked nightgowns that buttoned to the chin. The boys had never seen her while she was washing or lightly clad. She knew that if a look of theirs should burn a hole in the wall that had, for decades, divided her from them, everything would fall apart. The boys would only see the mother in her, and nothing but the mother, the guardian of the majority of the laws of behavior, as long as it never occurred to them to look upon her flesh, to notice that their mother was a woman too, someone her husband might take in his arms, into whose ear he might whisper endearments, a person whose body his fingers might explore. Whenever she thought of this on her sickbed she gave a groan. She must discuss the business with Mrs. Budenyik before it happened. Now that the youngest had taken leave of the house and spent the night with a strange woman she felt she could abandon her resistance, that her death was very close.
Making a great effort, she returned to her room and lay down once more in the b
ed she had only stolen from at night when everyone else was asleep. There was no need for the boys to know that she was still capable of moving about. For years now the boys had believed her to be bed-bound. And that was how it should be: there were certain advantages in the strategy she had developed for holding the family together. She kept the keys under her pillow along with the letter of credit from the pawnbroker for eight thousand crowns. Her few items of jewelry—her diamond-encrusted black enamel medallions, her earrings, her long gold necklace, and her little gold watch—she stored under the bolster. The silver, the antique beaten silver, the remaining glitter of her once glittering family, she kept in a leather trunk under the bed, and across her chest, in a small deerskin pouch, she hoarded the ready cash her husband sent her back from the front. That was all. The longer she existed in this state of pretended helplessness the better she understood the advantages of central control, of keeping everything hidden but close to hand. It was indeed a considerable advantage and a vital element of her strategy that she should be lying helpless in bed. Her bed was the epicenter of the entire family, the heart through and around which the blood flowed. She had been lying there for three years, apparently without moving. She knew there was a war on but in her heart of hearts thought it a mere excuse, a quibble that enabled her husband to go philandering and prevented him sitting at her bed. The older boy had made off with much the same excuse a year before. Now it was the younger one’s turn. What a fraud it all is, she thought, exhausted.
She lay in the bed unmoving, dreaming of teeth. She dreamt all her teeth had vanished. She knew this meant death: her lifelong experience and her various books of dreams told her as much. She was going to die: the boys would search her room, find the silver, the valuable papers, the jewels. She was planning to set up some kind of trust that the orphans’ court would handle, something that would allow the father and the sons the quarterly installment of a silver spoon or fork. She lay in bed with her eyes wide open, listening to the first sounds of morning. Every so often she tired and dropped off. In bed she always wore an old and not entirely clean mantilla shawl as if she were expecting visitors. She thought it natural that the wife of Colonel Prockauer should have plenty of callers. She had long been oblivious to the fact that no one visited her. All her life she had dreamed vainly of a soirée that she, the wife of Colonel Prockauer, would organize, opening up all three rooms of the apartment as well as the garden where there would be lanterns and items of improvised furniture, and small tables laden with wine, cold meats, and pastries; a soirée with perhaps a Gypsy band, with all the officers of the garrison present and even the commander dropping in for half an hour, not to mention various local dignitaries, with the mayor at the helm. She had often calculated whether the rooms would be big enough and tried to estimate the cost of the evening. She would stand at the garden gate in the gray silk dress made for her on the occasion of their silver anniversary, the dress she had never worn since, with her two sons by her side welcoming the guests. The colonel would wear all his decorations for the occasion. Whenever this frequently imagined but never realized dream came back to haunt her she began to cry, but no one was aware of this.