Satantango (4 page)

I
do about it?” “What are you, a gypsy?” the captain snaps at him. “What, me?” Petrina asks, perfectly shocked: “Me, a gypsy?” “Then stop fooling about! Give me your name!” Jug-ears glances helplessly at his friend, then shrugs, looking utterly confused, as if unwilling to take responsibility for what he is about to say. “Well, Sándor-Ferenc-István . . . er . . . András.” The officer leafs through the ID document and notes menacingly, “It says József here.” Petrina looks as though he has been pole-axed. “Surely not, chief, sir! Would you mind showing me . . .” “Stay right there!” the captain orders him, unwilling to put up with any more nonsense. The taller man’s face shows no sign of anxiety, not even interest, and when the officer asks him his name, he blinks a little as if he his mind had been elsewhere and courteously replies: “I beg you pardon, I didn’t get that.” “Your name!” “Irimiás!” His answer rings out, as if he were proud of it. The captain puts a cigarette in the side of his mouth, lights it with a clumsy movement, throws the burning match into the ashtray and puts it out with the matchbox. “I see. So you too have only one name.” Irimiás nods cheerfully: “Of course, sir. Doesn’t everyone?” The officer looks deep into his eyes, opens the door (“Is that all you have to say?”) and waves to them to follow him. They follow a couple steps behind him past the clerks with their sly looks, past the desks of the office outside, into the corridor and set off up the stairs. It is even darker here and they almost trip over the turns of the stairs. A crude iron balustrade runs alongside them, its polished and worn underside streaked with rust as they move from step to step. Everywhere there is the sense of everything having been thoroughly cleaned and not even the heavy fishlike smell that follows them everywhere can quite mask it.

UPPER FLOOR

FLOOR 1

FLOOR 2

The captain, slender as an officer of the hussars, proceeds before them with long ringing strides, his shining, half-length military boots almost musical as they strike against the polished ceramic tiles; he casts not a single look back at them but they are acutely aware he is considering everything about them, all the way from Petrina’s laborer’s boots to Irimiás’s dazzlingly loud red tie, having perhaps memorized such details, or maybe because the thin skin stretched over the back of his neck is capable of receiving deeper impressions than the naked eye can discover. “Identification!” he barks at a lushly mustached, swarthy, large lump of a sergeant as they step through another door marked 24, into a smoky, stuffy hall, not slowing for an instant, indicating with a wave of his fingers that those leaping to their feet at his entrance should sit down, while snapping out his orders: “Follow me! I want the files! I want the reports! Give me extension 109! Then a line to town!” before he disappears behind a glazed door on the left. The sergeant remains stiffly at attention then, as he hears the lock click, wipes his arm across his sweating brow, sits down at the desk opposite the entrance and pushes a printed form in front of them. “Fill it out,” he tells them, exhausted: “And sit down. But first read the instructions on the back of the page.” There is no movement of air in the hall. There are three rows of neon lights on the ceiling, the illumination is dazzling: the wooden blinds are closed here too. Clerks are running about nervously between a mass of desks: when they occasionally find themselves obstructing another’s path in the narrow gangways between tables they impatiently push each other aside with brief apologetic smiles as a result of which the desks are shifted a few centimeters every time, leaving sharp scrape marks on the floor. Some refuse to move out of the way though the piles of work in front of them have grown into huge towers. They clearly prefer to spend most of their working time bickering with their colleagues, carping at them for constantly shoving them in the back or pushing their desks aside. Some perch in their red fake-leather chairs like jockeys, telephone receiver in one hand; a steaming cup of coffee in the other. From wall to wall, from the back of the hall to the front, there are aging female typists sitting in rows that are straight as a dye, pecking at their machines. Petrina watches their feverish labor with astonishment, prodding Irimiás with his elbow though the other man simply nods, busily studying the “Instructions” on the back of the form. “Do you suppose there’s a cafeteria here?” whispers Petrina but his companion irritably gestures for him to be quiet. Then he looks up from the document and starts sniffing the air, asking: “Can you smell it?” and points upward. “It smells marshy here,” Petrina declares. The sergeant looks at them, beckons them closer and whispers: “Everything is rotting in this place . . . Twice in the last three weeks they’ve had to lime-wash the walls.” There is a shrewd light in his deep-set, puffy eyes, his jowls constricted by his tight collar. “Shall I tell you something?” he asks with a knowing smile. He moves close so they can feel the steam of his breath. He starts to laugh silently as if unable to stop himself. Then he speaks, emphasizing each individual word like a set of landmines: “I suppose you think you can get out of this,” he smiles, then adds: “But you’re screwed.” He looks mightily pleased with himself and taps the table three times as though repeating what he had just said. Irimiás gives a superior smile and goes back to studying the document while Petrina stares in horror at the sergeant who suddenly bites his lower lip, gives them a contemptuous look and leans indifferently back in his chair, once again simply part of the dense matrix of background noise. Once they have completed their forms he leads them into the captain’s office, all trace of fatigue, of the almost terminal exhaustion that had seemed to be his lot, vanishing from his features, his steps firm, his movements crisp, his speech military and sharp. The furnishings of the office suggest a measure of comfort. To the left of the writing desk stands an enormous potted plant on whose deep luxurious green the eye may rest, while in the corner by the door a leather sofa stretches complete with two leather armchairs and a smoking table of “modern” design. The window is covered by a heavy set of poisonously green velvet curtains: a strip of red carpet runs over the parquet flooring from the door to the desk. You can sense rather than see the fine dust sifting slowly from the ceiling, a dust hallowed and dignified by countless years. There is a portrait of some military figure on the wall. “Sit down!” the officer orders, pointing to three wooden chairs in a tight row in the far corner: “‘I want us to understand each other . . .” He leans back in his high-backed chair, pressing against the bone-colored wood, and fixes his eye on some distant point, some faint mark on the ceiling, while his voice, a surprisingly singsong voice, swims towards them through a clearing cloud of cigarette smoke, as though he were speaking from elsewhere, not from within the stifling fug that catches at their throats. “You’ve been summoned because you have endangered the project by your absence. No doubt you have noticed I’ve not given precise details. The nature of the project has nothing to do with you. I myself am inclined to forget the whole matter, but whether I do or not, depends on you. I hope we understand each other.” He lets his words hang there for a moment, timelessly significant. They are like fossils cushioned by damp moss. “I suggest we put the past aside,” he continues. “That is providing you accept my terms regarding the future.” Petrina is picking his nose; Irimiás trying to free his coat from under his companion’s rear. “You have no choice. If you say no I shall make sure you’re put away so long your hair will be gray by the time you get out.” “I beg your pardon, chief, but what are you talking about?” Irimiás interrupts. The officer continues as though he hasn’t heard him: “You have three days. Did it never occur to you that you should have been working? I know exactly what you’ve been up to. I give you three days. I think you should appreciate what is at stake here. I’m not making any wild promises beyond that, but three days you’ll get.” Irimiás considers protesting but thinks better of it. Petrina is genuinely terrified. “I’m fucked if I understand any of this, if you’ll pardon the expression . . .” The captain lets it go, pretends not to have heard, and carries on as if he were delivering himself of a verdict, a verdict that expects to be met with complaint but is willing to ignore it. “Listen carefully because I won’t say this again: no more delays, no more fooling around, no more trouble. All that is over. From now on you do what I say. Is that clear?” Jug-ears turns to Irimiás. “What’s he talking about?” “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Irimiás rumbles back. The captain shifts his gaze from the ceiling and his eyes darken. “Will you please shut up,” he drawls in his old fashioned, singsong voice. Petrina sits, almost lies, on the chair, blinking in panic, his hands clasped across his chest, the back of his neck against the chair back, his heavy winter coat spread about him like petals. Irimiás is sitting upright, his mind working feverishly. His pointed shoes are a blinding bright yellow. “We have our rights,” he sniffs, the skin on his nose forming delicate wrinkles. The captain is annoyed and blows out smoke, a brief sign of exhaustion flickering across his face. “Rights!” he exclaims: “You talk of rights! The law for your type is simply something to be exploited! Something to cover your back when you get into trouble! But that’s all over . . . I’m not arguing with you because this isn’t a debating club, you hear? I suggest you quickly get used to the idea that you do as I say. You will act legally from now on. You work within the law.” Irimiás massages his knees with sweaty palms: “What law?” The captain frowns. “The law of relative power,” he says, his face pale, his fingers turning white on the arms of the chair. “The law of the land. The people’s law. Do these concepts mean nothing to you?” he asks, employing, the less intimate form of “you” for the first time. Petrina is roused to speak (“What’s going on here? Are we
te
or
maga
now? Are we fellow workers or not? Which is it? If you ask me I prefer . . .”) but Irimiás restrains him, saying, “Captain, you know what law we’re talking about as well as we do. That’s why we’re here. Whatever you may think of us, we are law-abiding citizens. We are aware of our duties. I would like to remind you that we have frequently demonstrated that to be the case. We are on the side of the law as much as you are. So why all these threats? . . .” The captain smiles mockingly, fixes his big, sincere eyes on Irimiás’s inscrutable features and though the words sound friendly enough they can see there’s real fury at the back of them. “I know everything about you . . . but the truth is . . .” he gives a great sigh, “I have to admit I am none the wiser for that.” “That’s good,” the relieved Petrina prods his companion, then casts an endearing look at the captain who recoils from his gaze and stares threateningly back. “Because, you know, I can’t work when I’m tense! I simply can’t deal with it!” and then Petrina anticipates the officer, seeing and feeling that this is going to end badly: “Isn’t it better to talk like this, rather than . . .” “You just shut that flabby face of yours!” the captain screams at him and leaps from his chair. “What do you think? Who the hell are you, you pair of cheapskates?! You think you can banter your way past me?!” He sits back down, enraged. “You think we’re on the same side!? . . .” Petrina is immediately on his feet, waving his hands about in panic, trying to salvage what he can of the situation. “No, of course not, for God’s sake, beg to report we, how shall I put it, we wouldn’t dream of it! . . .” The captain says nothing, not a word, but lights another cigarette and stares fixedly ahead of him. Petrina stands there at a loss and gestures to Irimiás for help. “I’ve had enough of you two. That’s it!” the officer announces in a steely voice: “I’ve had enough of the Irimiás-Petrina duo. I am fed up with creatures like you, miserable dogs who think I am answerable to them!” Irimiás quickly intervenes. “Captain, you know us. Why can’t things remain as they were? Ask . . . (“Ask Szabó,” Petrina helps him out) . . . Sergeant Major Szabó. There’s never been any trouble.” “Szabó has been retired,” the captain answers bitterly, “I have taken over his files.” Petrina leans over to him and squeezes his arm. “And here we are, just sitting here like a flock of sheep! . . . Many congratulations, chief, my heartiest congratulations!” The captain is irritated and pushes Petrina’s hand away. “Back to your place! What do you think you’re doing!” He shakes his head in hopelessness then, because he sees they are genuinely shocked, he assumes a friendlier manner. “All right, now listen. I want us to understand each other. Please note, it is quiet here now. People are satisfied. That’s just how it should be. But if they read the papers properly they would know that there is a real crisis out there. We are not going to allow that crisis to hem us in and destroy all we have achieved! That’s a big responsibility, you understand, a serious responsibility! We are not going to allow ourselves the luxury of having characters like you wandering around wherever where they please. We don’t want whispers and rumors here. I know you can be useful to the project. I know you have ideas. Don’t think for an instant I don’t know that! But I’m not interested in what you did in the past — you got what you deserved for that. You are to adapt yourselves to the new situation! Is that clear?!” Now Irimiás shakes his head. “Not at all, captain, sir. Nobody can make us do anything we don’t want to. But when it comes to duty we will do what we can in our own way . . .” The captain leaps up again, his eyes bulging, his mouth starting to tremble. “What do you mean no one can make you do anything you don’t want to?! Who the hell are you to talk back to me?! Fuck you, you rotten, hopeless bastards! Filthy bums! You will report to me after tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp! Now get lost! Scram!” So saying, he turns his back on them and his body gives a compulsive shudder. Irimiás lopes towards the door, his head hanging and before drawing it closed behind him in order to follow Petrina who — like a snake — is slipping out of the room, he glances back a last time. The captain is rubbing his brow and his face . . . it is as if he were covered in armor; grey, dull, yet metallic; he seems to be swallowing light, some secret power is entering his skin; the decay resurrected from the cavity of the bones, liberated, is filling every cell of his body as if it were blood spreading to the extremities thereby announcing its unquenchable power. In that briefest of moments the rosy glow of health vanishes, the muscles tighten and once more the body begins to reflect light rather than absorb it, glittering and silvery, and the finely arched nose, the delicately chiseled cheekbones and the microscopically thin wrinkles are replaced by a new nose, new bones, new wrinkles that wipe away all memory of what had preceded them to preserve in a single mass everything which, years from now, will find itself interred six feet under. Irimiás closes the door behind him and begins to walk faster, crossing the busy hall to catch up with Petrina who is already out in the corridor not even looking back to see whether his companion has followed him because he feels that if he did turn to see he might be called back in again. The light percolates through heavy clouds, the town breathes through their scarves, an unfriendly wind swirls down the street, houses, sidewalk and freeway soaking helplessly under the downpour. Old women are sitting at their windows gazing at the dusk through net curtains, their hearts contracting at the sight of faces fleeing beneath the eaves outside, their faces full of such wrongs and sorrows that not even the steaming cookies baked in hot ceramic stoves can banish them. Irimiás strides furiously through the town, Petrina following him on little feet, complaining, indignant, getting left behind, occasionally stopping for a minute to recover his breath, his coat billowing in the wind. “Where now?” he asks miserably. But Irimiás does not hear him, moves ahead, muttering imprecations: “He’ll regret this . . . he’ll regret this, the bastard . . .” Petrina walks faster. “Let’s just forget the whole shitty business!” he suggests, but his companion is not listening. Petrina raises his voice. “Let’s head up river and see if we can get some action there . . .” Irimiás neither sees nor hears him. “I’ll wring his neck . . .” he tells his partner and demonstrates how. But Petrina is just as stubborn. “There’s so much we could do once there . . . There’s the fishing for example, you know what I mean. . . . or, listen: say there some lazy wealthy guy who, let us say, wants something built . . .” Having stopped in front of a bar, Petrina puts his hand in his pocket and counts their money and then they go through the glazed door. Inside there are only a few people hanging about, a transistor radio in the lap of the old woman minding the toilets is ringing out noon bells; the sticky wiping up cloth, the tables with damp pools ready to witness a thousand little resurrections are mostly unoccupied for now, tipping this way and that; four or five men with cavernous faces, their elbows propped on tables some way from each other, are wearing disillusioned expressions or slyly eyeing the waitress, or staring into their glasses or studying letters, absent-mindedly sipping at coffees, or cheap spirits or wine. A damp and bitter stench blends with cigarette smoke, sour breath rising to the blackened ceiling; beside the door, next to a smashed oil heater, a bedraggled rain-soaked dog trembles and stares panic-stricken outside. “Shift those lazy asses of yours!” shrieks a cleaning woman as she proceeds past the tables with a scrunched-up rag. Behind the counter, a girl with flaming red hair and a baby face is propping up a shelf laden with stale desserts and a few bottles of expensive champagne while painting her fingernails. On the drinkers’ side of the counter leans a stocky waitress, cigarette in one hand and a dime novel in the other, licking her lips in excitement every time she turns the page. On the walls a ring of dusty lamps serves for atmosphere. “A single, blended,” says Petrina and leans on the counter next to his companion. The waitress doesn’t even look up from her book. “And a Silver Kossuth,” adds Irimiás. The girl behind the bar, clearly bored, levers herself away from the shelf, carefully puts down the bottle of nail polish, and pours out the drinks, her movements slow and sluggish, only taking the odd glance at what she is doing, then pushes one towards Irimiás. “Seven-seventy,” she drawls. But neither man moves. Irimiás looks into the girl’s face and their eyes meet. “The order was for a single!” he growls. The girl quickly looks away and fills two more glasses. “Sorry!” she says, a little abashed. “And I seem to remember ordering a pack of cigarettes too,” Irimiás continues in a low voice. “Eleven-ninety,” the girl gabbles, glancing over at her colleague who is stifling a giggle and waves at her to leave off. Too late. “What’s so funny?” All eyes are fixed on them. The smile freezes on the waitress’s face, she nervously adjusts her bra strap through her apron then shrugs. Suddenly everything has fallen quiet. Next to the window opening onto the streets sits a fat man in a bus driver’s cap: he watches Irimiás in astonishment then quickly finishes his piccolo and clumsily slams the glass down on the table. “Excuse me . . .” he stutters, seeing how everyone is looking at him. And at that point, one cannot quite tell from where, a gentle humming begins. Everyone is breathlessly watching everyone else because for a moment it seems as though it is a person, a living person doing the humming. They steal glances at each other: the humming becomes a tad louder. Irimiás raises his glass then slowly puts it down again. “Is someone humming here?” he mutters in irritation. “Is someone making a joke?! What the hell is it? A machine? Or, or might it be . . . the lamps? No, it is a person after all. Could it be that old bat by the toilets? Or that asshole over there in the gym shoes? What is this? Some kind of dissent?” Then it suddenly stops. Now there’s only the silence, the suspicious glances. The glass is trembling in Irimiás’s hand; Petrina is nervously drumming on the counter. Everyone is sitting still, looking down, no one dares move. The old woman at the washrooms tugs the sleeve of the waitress. “Should we call the police?” The girl behind the bar can’t stop giggling out of sheer nervousness so, to bring things to a head, she quickly turns on the tap in the sink and begins making a noise with the beer glasses. “We will blow them all up,” says Irimiás in a strangled voice, then repeats it in a ringing bass: “We’ll blow up the lot of them. We’ll blow them up one by one. Cowards! Worms!” he turns to Petrina. “One stick of dynamite per jacket! That one there,” he indicates someone behind him with his thumb, “will get one stuffed in his pocket. That one,” he continues, glancing towards the fire, “will find one under his pillow. There’ll be bombs up chimney-flues, under doormats, bombs hung from chandeliers, bombs stuffed up their assholes!” The girl behind the bar and the waitress move closer to each other for comfort at the end of the counter. The patrons stare at each other in fright. Petrina weighs them up, his eyes full of hatred. “Blow up their bridges. Their houses. The whole town. The parks. Their mornings. Their mail. One by one, we’ll do it properly, everything in the proper order . . .” Irimiás purses his lips and blows out smoke, pushing his glass to and fro in pools of beer. “Because one has to finish what one has started.” “True enough, no point in shilly-shallying,” Petrina nods furiously: “We’ll bomb them in stages!” “All the towns. One after the other!” Irimiás continues as if in a dream. “The villages. The remotest little shack!” “Boom! Boom! Boom!” cries Petrina, waving his arms about: “You hear! Then BLAAM! The end, gentlemen.” He pulls a twenty from his pocket, throws it down on the counter right in the middle of a pool of beer, the paper slowly drawing the liquid up. Irimiás too moves away from the bar and opens the door but then turns back. “A couple of days, that’s all you have left! Irimiás will blow you to pieces!” he spits out by way of parting, curls his lip and, by way of a grand finale, runs his gaze slowly over the terrified larval faces. The stench of sewers mixed with mud, puddles, the smell of the odd crack of lightning, wind tugging at tiles, power lines, empty nests; the stifling heat behind low ill-fitting windows . . . impatient, annoyed half-words of lovers embracing . . . demanding wails of babies, their cries sliding off into the tin-smell of dusk; streets pliable, parks soaked to their roots lying obedient to the rain, bare oaks, half-broken dry flowers, scorched grass all prostrate, humbled by the storm, sacrifices strewn at the executioner’s feet. Petrina wheezes at Irimiás’s heels. “Are we going to see Steigerwald?” But his companion does not hear him. He has turned up the collar of his houndstooth coat, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head raised, and is hurrying blindly from street to street, never slowing, never looking back, his soaked cigarette drooping from his mouth, though he doesn’t even notice it, while Petrina continues to curse the world with an inexhaustible supply of imprecations, his bow legs buckling every so often and, when he falls twenty paces behind Irimiás, vainly shouting after him (“Hey! Wait for me! Don’t be in such a rush! What am I, a cow in a stampede?”) though the other pays no attention at all and, to make matters worse, he treads in a puddle up to his ankles, gives a great puff, leans against the wall of a house and mutters “I can’t keep up with this . . .” But, after a couple of minutes, Irimiás reappears, his wet hair hanging over his eyes, his pointed bright-yellow shoes caked in mud. Water drips off Petrina. “Look at these,” he says pointing to his ears, “Gooseflesh, frozen . . .” Irimiás nods reluctantly, clears his throat and says, “We’re going to the estate.” Petrina stares at him, his eyes popping out. “What . . . ? Now?! The two of us?! To the estate?!” Irimiás pulls another cigarette from the pack, lights it and quickly blows the smoke out. “Yes. Right