Tranquility (27 page)

“Of course,” I said, and we watched a couple trying to push a wheelchair up the stairs, but they couldn't. Finally, the man picked up the old man and carried him in his arms; the woman pushed the empty wheelchair; that's how they proceeded to the elevator.

“I painted the apartment,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I haven't been able to scrape clean all the furniture and the windows,” I said.

“I'll take care of that,” she said and I thought she wanted to squash a bug with the tip of her slipper, but she only swept some dry leaves aside so the bug wouldn't have to stumble. Somehow, it had been more bearable when with her bare hand she swept the buds off the branches.

“Let's get inside, you'll catch a cold,” I said, so I could get away.

“Sure,” she said and threw down the half-smoked cigarette, and then we returned to the ward.

“Tomorrow I'll try to come earlier,” I said.

“Whatever's best for you,” she said, and I tucked her in.

.   .   .

For weeks to come, a half-word or half-sentence would crop up from somewhere. At first, I'd go to see her every three or four days and then somehow we settled on Monday afternoons. We would sit in the easy chairs, sipping tea, and I'd read from my writings and the reviews of my
book; sometimes I'd bring some wine but drink alone because she was still taking medications.

“How is your mother?” she asked.

“All right, actually,” I said. “Now she's afraid I'd take her to a crematorium. She's seen a documentary in which they showed how the dead sit up while being cremated.”

“A-ha,” she said and put sugar in the tea; I didn't tell her this was the third time she did.

“Have you seen that woman?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Right,” she said.

“Must we talk about this?” I asked.

“No,” she said and put out a bag of biscuits or crackers because my stomach was rumbling.

“Nothing from the Red Cross yet?” she asked.

“Nothing yet,” I said, and got up to leave. I wanted to kiss her but realized that would be sexual contact too, so I didn't; before going home I stopped by the Pearl of the Balkans for a spritzer.

“Is this you?” Jolika asked and put the newspaper in front of me. She kept her finger on the large-grain photo as if on the back of a bug whose protective armor would be crushed any second.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“How long have you been a writer?” she asked.

“I don't know exactly,” I said.

“They teach that somewhere?” she asked.

“No. I don't believe so. But maybe in America,” I said, and then I paid and took a slow walk home. There was a letter from the French publisher; I
wanted to throw it out along with the junk mail, but I thought that would be ridiculous. With the help of the big dictionary I read their conditions and replied that I had none, I feel greatly honored by their offer and I thanked them. Then I wrote my mother a letter, too, from Malmö, because one of my acquaintances was going to Malmö the next day. Esteemed Mother, if you wish to see me, please don't let them close your eyes, I wrote and then crumpled the paper because I remembered that I should write with my left hand and mention that I would have three appearances in Malmö.

.   .   .

This past year went by quietly. There was a girl named Noémi whom I went to see occasionally, nothing special. We met at an awards ceremony; she carried around the champagne on a tray. My mother didn't even know about her.

I ran into Jordán once in the Skála Metró department store; I was looking for a Christmas present for Eszter. She said supper had gone cold already, I said it didn't matter.

When the letter arrived from the Red Cross, I started out with it to Eszter's place but remembered that it was Wednesday and we met only on Mondays. Then I thought I could make an exception just once, but before I rang the bell, I heard someone was with her. I listened for a while; they were only talking. The man was telling her about Alpha Centauri but I couldn't make out what he was saying; I could barely hear Eszter's voice. An old woman yelled over from the gallery asking me who I was looking for, so I had to leave. Finally, I went to see a movie,
The Terminator
, or some action flick like that; it was pretty awful.

I went back after the movie but they weren't there anymore.

I was afraid that Judit was close by, somewhere in Europe. Yes, she could
be living in Vienna, I thought, and that's what I feared most: that I might get on the train as early as tomorrow. In fact, I was hoping they wouldn't be able to locate her, though it's not true that I didn't want to see her. But to knock on someone's door, after half a lifetime, someone whose handwriting our mother cannot distinguish from mine, is not a simple thing at all. I wanted to wait at least until Monday, so I wouldn't have to do it alone. And in the evening I tore open the envelope; when I read that she had been buried in Nice ten years earlier, I breathed easier.

.   .   .

The next day, in the Széchenyi library, I asked for the back issues of French newspapers, and from the rough translation of the librarian I found out that the world was shocked to learn that following last night's Paganini concert, the celebrated violinist Rebecca Werkhard, barely twenty-five years old, cut open the veins on her wrist with a violin string. The investigation is still ongoing; the violinist's record publisher in New York will arrange the funeral.

“That's about it. There is also an obituary, but it's very long,” she said.

“Don't bother with that,” I said.

“Would you like a photocopy of this?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Can I put it away then?” she asked.

“Just a second,” I said and looked at the yellowed large-grain picture, and still did not feel anything. She was just like Rebeka Weér at age twenty-five. She knew exactly why she had taken on her mother's name.

.   .   .

Monday I went to see Eszter. She said I could have come in last Wednesday; she was only having tea with an acquaintance. An astronomer; had
been coming regularly to the library for the last few weeks, that's where they struck up a friendship, and I said, of course, and that wasn't the reason I didn't ring the bell, but because we had grown used to meeting on Mondays.

“Go to Nice,” she said.

“I can find a tombstone closer than that,” I said.

“You know you have to go,” she said.

“Why, you're not going home either, though you could already,” I said.

“That's different. Maybe one day,” she said.

“If you want to, I could go with you,” I said.

“That wouldn't be good for either of us,” she said. “Besides, you couldn't leave your mother for such a long time.”

“Of course,” I said, and figured out for myself that the Eastern Carpathians are closer to the Western Riviera by at least as much as Alpha Centauri is in relation to the Bólyai Crater.

“I've no reason to go. I feel nothing,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“It was better while she was alive,” I said.

“Reality is always better,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “The one thing that bothers me is that the violin string was my idea.”

“That probably didn't even occur to her,” she said.

“Of course not,” I said. “And it's also pretty lousy that it was our father who got her out of the country; and that she didn't say anything about that.”

“That's silly. The last time she saw your father was at the same time you did. Don't envy her for being brave enough to get on a tanker.”

“I don't; but I know our father got her out. And he's the one who's been sending the monthly allowance.”

“You've no way of knowing that,” she said.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Sure,” she said and then asked how my mother was, and I said actually all right, only she was still in the throes of this cremation phobia, and lately she started believing in God. Then I drank my tea; in the doorway, I asked whether she would come with me, should I decide to go to Nice after all, and she said that would probably do no good to either of us, and then kissed me on the forehead.

.   .   .

What's this racket, Son?

This is music, Mother.

Turn it off, right now. I want to sleep.

You've got plenty of time to sleep; you're not going anywhere tomorrow either, Mother.

I'm going to throw out that record player.

What are you so worked up about? Tomorrow you won't remember anything anyway.

I won't let you talk to me like this!

We've been talking like this for fifteen years, why not now? Bring yourself a cup of tea and let's listen to the music; if you lean out the window you can even see the moon.

You're not a human being anymore! You're the same kind of filth as your kid sister is!

My
older
sister. You could remember that at least, for my sake. By the way, Mother, how come you've never wanted to commit suicide?

Miserable wretch. I wish you had both rotted in my womb! But you'll have to answer to God for everything; you'd better believe what I'm telling you. God will punish you but good, Son!

Maybe he will. Still, you could give it a try. Really, why in the hell don't you do away with yourself, Mother?

Get out of my house!

I'd be glad to, but then you'll starve to death. You can't even turn on the faucet without me, Mother.

My heart . . . my heart is aching!

Come off it, you've no heart. And neither do I. There is snot in place of our hearts. Snot, do you understand? We're going to die because we don't feel anything, I said, then I put her out of the room and lowered the volume on the record player because it was really very loud and I can't work like that. At dawn, I awoke to the crackling of the record because the arm did not return to its place. Not very good, this Tesla player, I thought, and then got dressed and once more looked over the short story about the mentally ill priest who wiped out his congregation with wafers dipped in rat poison. It will do for readers in the countryside, I thought, and made her breakfast; I put her lunch into the refrigerator.

When are you coming back son.

Only tomorrow evening. I'm going to the country, for a reading.

Lately, you've been going every week.

We can't make it on Judit's money, Mother. Don't forget to heat up the soup. And turn off the TV for the night, I said, and I heard her hooking up the two security chains. I walked to the Keleti Station, and when I found out I'd have to change trains, I almost turned back.

I got back from the reading sometime around noon. Eszter worked until five on Mondays, so I killed some time around the station, even though I hate the Keleti. To be more precise, I've always abhorred businesslike poverty. I refer to people claiming to be needy who prowl around tourists with backpacks; those who brandish three-year-old prescriptions and need only twenty forints to fill them; those who pray for you, may God bless you and your whole family, but if you have no change on you they spit after you, as if penury granted one any special privileges.

For a long time now, the Keleti has been the breeding ground of this shiftiness; this is where the black marketers and evangelizers, the money changers and homemade cripples gather. One can immediately distinguish between those working for themselves and those who are only outworkers. From the shape of the scars, it's possible to tell which limbs had been severed by a machine during a work accident and which ones had been chopped off with an axe in some woodshed when in Romania the good news spread like wildfire that for a certain percentage of the take, it was possible to practice begging in Budapest. Whole convoys of freshly mutilated cripples arrived. Sometimes the same trucks brought them here that had delivered relief shipments to Transylvania and Bucharest. Then the poor wretches were quartered in some VIIIth District cellar, and their employer distributed the small wooden signs, to be suspended from the neck, saying, “I am Ceausescu's victim”; and in the evening, the same employer collected the rent that was eighty-plus percent of the beggars' daily intake.

For a long time now, these imported cripples shared the underpass with domestic disabled veterans, vendors of rotten tangerines, and sellers of cheap bedding, but one could also get half-price cigarettes, alarm clocks made in Hong Kong – playing songs instead of ringing – for a
quarter of their original price. The first Chinese eateries were opened in this underpass, and it was here one could first play chess, for a fee, with recently released prisoners. They would spread the oilcloth chessboard over a garbage bin, suck on their coffin nails, and wait for the unsuspecting clients who still trusted the King's Indian Defense, who once were aspiring masters but something happened to prevent further progress, who may have been defeated by eight-year-old Judit Polgár in the county competition. People who knew everything there was to know about chess, but nothing of a very effective choice-based pedagogical method used in the Vác penitentiary: one could choose between playing chess or getting fucked in the ass, but having opted for chess there was no backtracking, like I'd rather get fucked in the ass. The loser must drink a liter of water. In short, after the third game one really thought hard about where to move that pawn, because the next dose of water would be poured down his throat through the funnel made of the rolled-up oilcloth chessboard. And six or seven liters of water can easily kill a man; one's stomach becomes like a balloon tied to a turned-on faucet.