Tranquility (11 page)

Well, these are the kinds of things one heard everywhere. Even the beggars talked politics. They'd be hanging around the demonstrations, walking at the tail end of the enthusiastic funeral march at some reinterment, or distributing flyers for hourly wages, and at night collect the giant posters because they could use them as blankets. Newspaper founders spoke of a circulation greater than the number of people in the country able to read – because that's what Hungary's diaspora demanded. Fifteen million copies at least; let's hope the printing presses won't fall apart. And practically within minutes, small-scale industry began to flourish; they manufactured everything from new party badges to new street signs, and lovely high school girls were selling cans – with the last breath of communism in them – because Globus cannery supported the revolution by donating several thousand empty liverwurst cans. Everyone had at least three different visions of the future, and one was lovelier than the next. Perhaps for the first time after a thousand years, there was an idyllic vision of paradise, if only for a short time. After all, while everybody was grabbing for the microphone, nobody was reaching for the holster; as if from now on the only kind of death would be the natural one, save for some lofty murder for love. The only time we saw a water cannon, in one of the side streets, it turned out to be full of hot tea. The demonstrators stood in line in front of the water cannon, got their Russian tea in plastic cups and then went back to the Parliament. Isn't that just marvelous, Mr. Writer? Yes, it is, Mr. Concierge.

.   .   .

“Leave me alone,” said the woman, half-asleep, but I didn't stop; clinging to her back I was trying to get in between her thighs, finally finding the parched vagina.

“If you can't, maybe you'd better go back to sleep,” she said.

“In a minute,” I said.

“Hurry up then,” she said, and I tried to hurry up. I got hold of her wilted-guelder-rose breasts and kept jabbing her womb like a dog.

You'll be just like this, I thought. Another two or three decades, I thought. And exactly as flabby and flaccid, too. And smelling like ammonia, I thought; by the time I came she was wheezing asthmatically in her sleep. And then I awoke to realize I was squeezed in between her slushy womb and the damp wall, and for long minutes I didn't dare move. I didn't remember how and when I moved from the easy chairs to the bed. My head ached and the vodka was still burning my throat as if I had drunk half a bottle of sodium hydroxide. I climbed out of the bed somehow, found my clothes in the light of a match; the woman kept sleeping, her knees tucked under her stomach, like an embryo grown old. Above her hung the picture of her mother who for some reason had to watch, even in her death, the mailman, and me, and the twenty-five crippled birds.

.   .   .

Outside, the toilet door slammed; I waited while Nyitrai struggled with his shit, because I didn't feel like meeting anybody, then I took three cigarettes from the Fecske pack and slunk out of the laundry room like some sneak thief.

It was dawning, fresh vegetables arrived on small trucks; behind the covered Market Hall, three men were clubbing fish. One of them took out the carps with a net from the big tank and threw them on a board, the two
other men, in overalls, would beat the heads of the fish until they stopped wriggling.

“The rest goes to the live tanks,” said the man with the net, then climbed off the big tank and lit up. The other two took a short rest, leaning on their clubs, and then they all began to throw the dead fish into a large crate.

I sat down at a concrete table and had a smoke. There was nothing open. It must have been about five-thirty or not even that, I had forgotten to wind my watch the night before. Rebeka is flying, I thought, and watched how the fish with their smashed heads swam in the air.

.   .   .

Finally, the basement wine bar opened on the street opposite me. Ten more minutes, yelled a woman, so I kept standing around for another ten minutes in front of the broom she had set across the entrance. By the time she let us in, there were three of us. One man carried on his shoulders some gas pipes, obviously from a building being demolished; the other had four batches of the evening paper,
Esti Hirlap
. The Scrap and Byproduct Salvaging Center opens only at seven, the man could have waited with the gas pipes, but at least Jolika the barmaid could see that the price of the first spritzer was covered. There were enough pipes there to buy half a pint of Unicum. I was the only one Jolika looked over suspiciously. She put the double spritzer in front of me without a word but her glance made it clear that customers of this joint didn't wear dark suits.

In time, she got used to the dark suit and for fifteen years I became one of the regulars at the Pearl of the Balkans. I didn't have my own reserved table, or my own pitcher, or anything like that, I'd just go down there for a spritzer, or maybe just to tidy myself up a little in the lavatory. Sometimes I exchanged a few words with Jolika, though in her own way she maintained
a distance even after several years. And I was convinced that even if I got a sweat suit, and the collateral for my spritzer was two batches of daily papers, it would make no difference in her attitude toward me.

“Your head reminds me of those sorry-ass counts in period movies, playing Russian roulette all night,” she said to me once, and I was glad she didn't hide her feelings.

Another time she brought a newspaper along with the spritzer, and threw it down on the table.

“Is that you?” she asked and pointed to the photo that accompanied the interview I had given the paper.

“Yes,” I said.

“And what do you write?” she asked.

“All kinds of things. It's hard to talk about it.”

“Well, why don't you give it a try,” she said, irritated.

“I write stories. Things I hear here and there,” I said, because this seemed to be the simplest thing to say.

“You've written about me too?” she asked, and kept her forefinger on my photo as if she were pressing a bug to the table; one wrong word and the chitin armor will be crushed.

“No, I haven't written about you, Jolika,” I said.

“All right, then,” she said, “today's spritzer's on the house.”

.   .   .

But this happened years later; that first early morning we did not talk about short stories and interviews and newspaper photos. That early morning all I wanted was my nausea to pass, because I kept remembering how I crawled, like a creeper, upon the back of that hapless woman. Like a slug on the wound of a decaying fruit tree. Just to do what the mailman and all
the other customers did, to shoot my load into her. Yet, I didn't want to. I didn't want to at all, but sooner or later one crawls from the easy chair to under the blanket made for two, even if the ammonia smell doesn't really stimulate the sexual urge.

“Where is the lavatory?” I asked the barmaid.

“Opposite the air-raid shelter,” she said, and took the key off the hook by the pitchers.

“It'll be one forint,” she added, “and please take your bag with you, I don't want any misunderstandings.” So I took my bag, and between empty crates and aluminum barrels I groped my way to the back of the corridor where the air-raid shelter began.

Because that was the condition of the District Council's permit: eighty square meters for the Pearl of the Balkans wine bar, eighty square meters for the air-raid shelter where in case of emergency the tenants of the building could sit around. Jolika pleaded in vain with the official in charge of housing. She asked him to watch the documentary on ground-to-ground missiles and to inspect the cellar for himself; then he'd understand why, in case of emergency, the tenants would rather hide in the large garbage cans than in the cellar. The official said only that, personally, he couldn't care less if half the district moved into garbage cans; after all, that's where garbage belongs, but rules are rules and they must be obeyed. “And I was this close to pulling his own wastepaper basket over his head like a bedpan. To squash his mug into the mess of rejected applications for apartments or financial aid mixed in with leftover food, but I remembered that his was the last signature I needed. So instead, I just laughed at his little joke and said, excuse me comrade manager, I didn't mean to tell you what to do, but another ten–fifteen square meters would have helped us store all those
barrels. And by the time I had all the signed permits in my satchel, about a year and a half later, I forgot what kind of wallpaper or tablecloths or cupboard I had wanted. I had never met so many crooks in my life. A little Easter ham for this one, a bit of Yugoslav liquid soap for that one; otherwise, the only way to get some kind of stamp on an application was to wipe your ass with it. Many times, I had to give something to the doorman just so he'd let me into the waiting room. If you can believe it, in a year and a half I met only one decent person, when I had to get permission for the name, and I had to give a reason why Pearl of Mangalia – because originally that would have been the name, not the Balkans – in short, why not Joli's Cellar or Joli's Pub. And like an idiot, I put down that I had a Romanian lover by the name of Perla Radu and in Romanian
perla
means pearl.

“That I should come out tonight, I should promise to come out, because he wants to show me something nice, he was telling me half in Russian half in Romanian on the beach in Mangalia, and I said he'd better leave me alone, because that huge man over there is my father, which of course wasn't true. My father spent the whole day in the hotel because he couldn't stand the heat or the Romanians. My mother, on the other hand, wanted to see the sea and they told her at the State Travel Bureau that in that case Romania is better than Bulgaria. If she's careful to wash the vegetables and to smell the meat before eating, everything would be all right. In short, I told this boy, half in Russian half in Romanian, that I wasn't born yesterday, either, I had a pretty good idea what he was planning to show me, but I took care not to scare him away completely because I had never seen a face as handsome as his, not even on movie posters. And that evening, when I snuck out of the hotel, I couldn't believe my eyes. We just sat on the beach and watched the sea gleam in the dark. You could read a book by the light
coming from the waves. Some algae or seaweed was floating on top of the water, some stream brought them there every June, and the foamy waves were shining like glowworms. Until that time, I thought people cried only because of pain or sadness. That boy's eyes were full of tears, too, even though he had seen that sight many times before, had had time to get used to it. Then he got up and walked into the sea as if he owned it. He ducked for a second and greenish water dripped down his back. His spine and his shoulder blades were glowing. That's what God must have looked like to those few lucky enough to see him. Then I got up too and followed him. He didn't have to call me; from the splashing of my feet, he knew I was right behind him. I even forgot to be afraid because I had never been with a boy. All I felt was that I was the only woman in the world who was now being dressed in a faint green light. Whose bridal veil was the shining sea. ‘What's your name?' I asked when the water turned red around our waists. ‘Perla,' he said. ‘What does that mean?' I asked, but he couldn't explain. ‘Wait,' he said and broke our embrace and plunged into the water; and I was on the verge of weeping, but this time not with pleasure but with fear since it seemed the sea had swallowed him for hours. I did give him a slap, too, when he finally surfaced, but he only laughed. And then, using his teeth, he pried open the shells of a mollusk. ‘This is perla,' he said, and kissed me, and I felt the pearl in my mouth. It's here, on my necklace.

“If you think it's worthwhile, you can use this story, it's a nice one.

“That's why the place is called the Pearl of the Balkans. The funny thing is that I also got a huge slap on my face that dawn, and half a year later another one when, during a friendly soccer game, I rooted for the Romanian side – right in front of my father. But believe me, when you get a pearl kissed into your mouth, you don't give a shit. My husband, for example, was
more Hungarian than the seven chieftains of the conquering Huns, still, when I was four-months pregnant he knocked me down the way he'd fling his snot to the ground. They took the kid out of me, along with my womb, and my husband got one year, suspended, and immediately threw me out of the apartment, with two suitcases and a Unipress coffeemaker, so much for that. In short, I did write that I had a lover named Perla, but that man in the office kept shaking his head and saying that it wouldn't do. ‘Why,' I asked, ‘would it be better if I named it after my husband who is the reason my uterus got thrown into the garbage in János Hospital?' The man said that was different, that was still a lawful relationship; but with the reason I gave, my application was sure to be rejected. But he, as a private person, understood me completely, he'd been to the seashore too. Anyway, why couldn't a friendly wine shop be called the Pearl of Mangalia? So he suggested that we should come up with another reason, together of course, and of course the kind that has, at least tangentially, something to do with reality. ‘What would happen, say, if we wrote that with this name we'd like to support Hungarian-Romanian solidarity? This wine shop would serve the same purpose as does the Peter Gróza pier and the Bucharest restaurant. What would you say to that, dear Miss Jolán?' ‘You know damn well what I'd say,' I said. ‘Can I write it then?' he asked, and he was already fitting an empty sheet into the typewriter. In short, I'm telling you, he was the only one of about fifty officials who didn't hold his hand out; but it didn't help much in the end. I had to change Mangalia to the Balkans, because unlike Mangalia, everybody knows what the Balkans is.”