Tranquility (24 page)

“Find her and bring her home. Don't write to her, just go to wherever she is.”

“All right,” I said and got up and then waded into the water, but only as far as I could feel the mud under my feet.

.   .   .

The other day, on the evening news, they announced there would be compensations. It wasn't clear when, or how much of the lost machinery would be returned to the grandson of Manfréd Weiss or the survivors of Gedeon Richter; whether only time served in Siberia and participation in the '56 revolution would mean extra points or Dachau would also be considered,
but the TV viewers could be sure that something would definitely happen. Moreover, the very fact that we may deal with this subject in prime time is significant. We might put it this way: does anyone need anything more than this? In short, there is so much of everything: land, woods, and former castles turned into tractor stations, and now all of it is waiting to be returned to its former owners. So please dig out your titles and deeds, contracts and bills of sale from your attics or kitchen cabinets. And when my mother heard this, she asked for the Révai Encyclopedia, maps of Hungary's counties, and the heraldry books, and began to jot down what belonged to her. She didn't let it bother her if the windows of one castle or another gave on the Radnai Alps or on a housing settlement in Bratislava; neither borders nor peace treaties fazed her. She evicted museums and liquidated old-age homes; she catalogued everything that she imagined could possibly belong to the Weérs; she had a whole list of long-altered streets, long bombed-out factories, and long-collapsed mines.

Let me have the calculator, Son.

Here you are, Mother. Hold it toward the lamp, otherwise it won't work, I said, and she figured out how much wheat grows on fifty thousand hectares, and how many cubic meters of wood she could get from half the Mátra and a quarter of the Bakony mountains. And it wouldn't have been any use to tell her that all we have, Mother, are these eighty square meters here. That even my great-grandmother didn't have much more and my grandmother didn't even have this much. That one of the castles is abroad, the other is an orphanage; so I just picked up the necessary forms and helped her fill them out, although even my mother's ID card had long expired. Then she put in an envelope the hefty list she had compiled – it was larger than a good family saga – she stuck some old stamp on the envelope, and I locked the whole thing in the desk drawer.

.   .   .

And then I received an envelope of similar size, and instead of the sender's name it said the tea's been cooled off. My first impulse was to send it back unopened, but I realized that would be ridiculous, so I made a pot of mint tea, put out a few bags of plain biscuits to be at hand, and began working on the proofs. It would have been much better if Eszter helped me, but I didn't want her to be in the proximity of that other woman again. I didn't even mention that the proofs had come; I read my own book with the help of a guideline, like kids do in elementary school. The corrections took three days because the typesetter woman didn't understand that where have you been son, for example, was one word, or that the Good Lord is capitalized even in the middle of something obscene, if only for the sake of propriety. When finished, I put the whole thing in an envelope and mailed it, but in a few days it came back because instead of the publisher's, I had addressed it to the Department of Compensation where they decided, very correctly, that without the proper forms they could not consider my request for compensation; so I took the package to Andrássy Road and tried to stuff it into the mailbox.

“Look who's here,” she said as she opened the door.

“Wouldn't fit in the mailbox,” I said without batting an eye because I had taken my time and let my attack of suffocation subside before ringing the bell.

She must have crawled out of the shower at the sound of the second ring. Here and there the white robe clung to the artificially tanned skin and drops of water were rolling down from underneath the towel wrapped around her head, but even after the shower, the same tart almond smell was emanating from her every pore as from my mother's sheets in the hamper. As if these women perspired cyanide. As if their glands were poison glands.
And I, as if at home or at Eszter's place, took a bottle of wine out of the fridge and two glasses from the kitchen.

“I've got to be at the theater by seven. Want to come along?” she asked, shook the small bottle in her hand, pulled one of her legs up on the couch, making sure her vagina was visible, and began to polish her toenails.

“I don't go to the theater, not even by myself,” I said.

“Sorry, I forgot about the mental abuses. By the way, if you plan to disappear for days again, at least call that poor girl and tell her. It's pretty embarrassing when she comes looking for you in my office. I might let something slip.”

“You'd never dare let anything slip,” I said.

“There is no problem with the daring, believe me. Apropos, aren't we supposed to use the formal address? I could almost be your mother.”

“Why don't you just skip the comparisons,” I said.

“But at least let's avoid physical fights. Everything else is all right, but that I don't like.”

“Then next time, please introduce yourself before you spread your legs for somebody.”

“I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this. You're not the first man to screw his father's mistress. You should learn to handle such things more elegantly. It's at least as important as speaking English.”

“It seems I still have some human traits,” I said.

“I seem to have heard this somewhere before. And considering how fond you are of human traits, you can hit pretty hard. Just remembered: yesterday I sent off a bit of a pilot translation to Paris. I'm sure they'll want you. So much innocence in one volume is considered a novelty today.”

“I don't care,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” she said.

“I'd better go,” I said.

“Actually, what did you come for?”

“To fuck, probably,” I said.

“You see, my darling, this is indeed a human trait. No male dog can say this so nicely to his bitch.”

“I guess that's why you loved my father,” I said.

“Don't make me laugh. My cat, that's what I loved. But it would have been hard to get a good screw with my cat. And I loved your mother, too, until she ground up my cat. Incidentally, she prepared you and your sister's baby food with the same meat grinder. Daddy cleaned the carrots, I cooked, and mommy did the grinding. That was our division of labor.”

“I'm sure it's best I leave now,” I said and got up.

“As you wish, my darling. Sometimes it's very useful to know exactly how much of reality one wants to endure. And I don't particularly like to get nostalgic either.”

“Of reality I can endure more than this,” I said.

“Then you may sit back down. My imagination is far less intense than yours, even though I washed your diapers.”

“Maybe you knew my mother, maybe you even slept with my father, but I can't believe you have ever washed diapers,” I said.

“I lived with your family for one year, four months and twelve days, my sweet. I wouldn't call it idyllic, but somehow we lived through it.”

“Interesting. And I remember even the room I was born in,” I said.

“Then you probably also remember that while your mother sang workers' songs in provincial culture centers and your father was typing up false
depositions and minutes of interrogation in the Interior Ministry, somebody changed your diapers, and your sister's, too.”

“My father was a critic,” I said.

“Of course he was, darling: this is a good deposition, this is a bad one. Don't fret though; he wasn't really the one who had to make that kind of decision. He was one of those silent secret police officers. It was at home that he indulged himself. If it makes you any happier, it was comrade Jordán who got him into the IM, as a pencil-pusher, strictly to please his daughter. So that my class-alien girlfriend would have a better chance of getting an apartment.”

“Then, I suppose, you made an actress out of my mother.”

“No, my sweet. But a few years later it was because of your mother that I got kicked out of every theater, which is not such a great disaster; I never had a knack for dramaturgy. But you have nothing to do with all this. Though I must admit I'm surprised, too, at how good a lay you are.”

“You're ridiculous,” I said.

“I see we've reached the limit of endurable reality pretty fast,” she said.

She can say anything she wants, I won't move, I thought.

“This, for example, is decidedly a motherly trait,” she said and gave the little bottle another shake.

She can say anything. I don't care, I thought.

“Reality was a big problem for her, too. That's what probably drove her mad,” she said and put one of her feet on the small table.

I'll never in this life hit a woman again, I thought.

“It will dry faster if you blow on it,” she said.

“Find somebody else for that,” I said.

“A bit earlier it seemed that's why you came in the first place.”

“It passed,” I said.

“Come on, darling, your pants will soon be full of stains.”

“I'll wash them then.”

“Would you hand me my bag?” she asked, and I handed it to her. After fumbling for a short while, she threw two Góliát batteries in my lap. “Here is a man's job for you. Put these in the one made of silicone. In the bathroom,” she said and for a moment I had no idea what she meant, but she helped me out, adding, “The dildo, my darling.”

.   .   .

When I walked out on Andrássy Road at dawn, I felt the kind of dread wild animals might sense when a branch breaks off or the wind picks up fallen leaves, but soon I was convinced she was planning to kill me. Yes, she simply wants to do me in. She'd put something in my tea. Some chemical that doesn't show up in lab tests or has a delayed effect, like rat poison, which works only after a few days so the other rats wouldn't suspect anything, I thought, and on my next visit I didn't drink my tea. Then I thought she was ill. Yes, syphilitic. Women like her are all syphilitic. And she keeps quiet about it, because this way she can get rid of Eszter, too. She must hate Eszter at least as much as she does my mother. The reason she hasn't tracked her down is because she has even more wicked designs than that; she wants to murder without making a scene, I thought. After fear had kept me awake for sixty hours straight, I went to have a blood test, even though the last time I let a doctor touch me was when I was a child.

And each time I walked out of that apartment it was as if for the last time, but I never managed to stay away for more than a week. Just as drug addicts learn how to work the needle, I learned to make scratches with the
razorblade on my neck to look as though I had nicked myself shaving. I learned to make excuses by referring to nonexistent acquaintances, road accidents, and subway cars idling in tunnels because of false bomb threats; I became adept at cleaning up in the Balkan's toilet, and overwhelming the odor of bitter almond with half a bottle of chlorine-smelling liquid soap.

“Terrible, you smell like chlorine, again,” Eszter would say.

“Then give me a bath,” I'd reply, and while we made love she would squeal so loud the neighbors thought I was holding a knife to her throat, even though I wasn't – not yet. And when I found out that my father had stopped visiting us not because he died “with tragic suddenness,” of which there is nothing more to be said, Son, but because as the escort of a delegation of journalists, he forgot to come home from Houston, even though he was charged with making sure everyone returned, and when I found out that from the money he had made by selling the documents stolen from comrade Jordán's safe he first established a fairly profitable religion and then found his place in the recording industry – while comrade Jordán, aware of the rules of the game, used his service revolver to put a bullet in his own head – then Eszter asked, my God, what's the matter with you, you look like you've eaten some chalk again.

.   .   .

It's not possible to live like this, not even for an animal, I thought. I'd tell her the whole nightmare immediately, right this minute, I thought, but when I stepped out the main entrance, Eszter was there, sitting on the balcony of the Artists' Café. She didn't even look at me; just got up, put money on the table and hurried off; and I was unable to run after her. I felt only a momentary dizziness. The kind one feels when standing up too fast. Then all the streetlights and store displays went dark, the cars went silent, and
the sidewalk slipped out from under me. I kept falling in a pitch-black vortex, more precisely: something was falling, and not exactly in pitch-black darkness because that's still visible. People were coming out of the Opera House. One man said, leave him, he's drunk, but the other bent down and touched my neck, searching for a pulse.

“We should call an ambulance,” he said.