Tranquility (34 page)

He should be the one to marry us, I thought, while I boiled water for the celery soup. Though I wasn't sure we had to have organ music, I thought. The altar is not a buffet table, I thought. Only those should step up to the altar who could satisfy their hunger there too. Who don't complain about small sacrifices and can feel the way they should, I thought, and then I sliced the bologna into the soup and poured in a bit of wine, too.

Lunch turned out well. I smoked a cigarette and then swept the whole place, taking down the garbage a number of times; the remaining odds and ends I put in the maid's room. The mattress finally dried, the apartment was quite bearable; and I like cleaning anyway.

As he had promised, early in the evening, he rang the bell again but I did not open the door because then I would have had to explain things. More precisely: I wanted to call after him from the window, but decided not to. If he looked up he would have noticed me, but he didn't.

I planned to send him a postcard and thank him for the food. Except for him, I have never met a priest who didn't belch up something from the Holy Writ after every gulp of the sacred wine, and who wouldn't refer to brotherly love as the epitome of everything. Yes, Father, you're definitely a good priest. Your celery soup is worth more than the sacred wine of your colleagues. I'm not surprised you were removed from a cathedral and sent to the middle of nowhere. Believe me, Father, the bishop's Land Rover would have probably killed that unfortunate child. And if not, the bishop would have no problem making his hospital visits in his Land Rover. Because to visit he would go, that's for sure, and he'd deliver such a sermon by the beds and infusion tubes that even the cameraman's eyes would
well up. Maybe you wouldn't agree with me, Father; maybe I am simply fooled by raw experience, but please forgive me for being taken in by such experiences. Of course, my second-class image of God is not something I received from second-class priests, I thought. That is a positively private and regrettable matter, I thought. Though in time it might be modified, I thought. What we already know with certainty is that being housetrained isn't even a permanent trait, I thought. And you're right, Father, maybe my vanity hasn't diminished, but I'd prefer to bow my head at a time when I don't feel a special need for divine providence. To do it just for the hell of it; when instead of urine, my lap would be soaked in the wetness of, say, Eszter's loins.

.   .   .

I tried to imagine going to the district police station, but I couldn't see my way past the doorman. Then I thought it would be best to consult the doctor who determined the cause of death. I remembered putting the written report in one of the drawers, along with all the papers relating to the funeral. Luckily, I don't usually throw out papers. I found my mother's letters addressed to nonexistent hotels that even before the arrival of the body-bearers I had stuffed back into the drawer. I took the razor blade from my wallet and cut open every one of the one hundred and twenty-four envelopes. All I found were empty sheets; in fifteen years, she had not written a word to Judit or to me. Thinking about it now, I realized that from the very beginning she had also cheated her way through this lame game. Eszter was right, I thought, and I wasn't especially surprised to learn that my mother knew exactly with whom she was corresponding. In her own way, after all, she was aware of everything and she also remembered everything. And then I thought these blank sheets would come in handy if I were to continue writing; I was running out of paper anyway.

.   .   .

The man at the desk asked me who I was looking for, but I couldn't remember the person's name so I had to look it up on the deposition again. I walked up to the fourth floor, partly because too many people were waiting for the elevator and partly because nobody ever hurries just because it would be good to get something over with as soon as possible. I stopped on one of the landings and in the reflecting window pane I inspected my jacket, checked if I had buttoned my shirt the right way and things like that; then with a little spittle I wet my fingers and wiped my eyes because I didn't want to look seedy. I must be calm, I thought, and I should have eaten more before, because when hungry one is less disciplined. Then I continued up to the fourth floor; in front of door number 312, the only thing my mind registered was that in these offices too the door handle was made of aluminum.

“Enter,” a female voice answered my knock, and I introduced myself and said I was looking for István Frégel, and she said the doctor was not in at the moment, but if it's something urgent I should wait for him in the corridor, though it would be better if I came back around noon.

“Then maybe tomorrow,” I said.

“Would you like to leave a message?” she asked.

“No, it's something private,” I said and breathed a sigh of relief that it wouldn't happen today, after all, or maybe in the afternoon, yes, I'll come back in the early afternoon, and hurried toward the staircase, I would have preferred to run, but suddenly the elevator door opened and I bumped into the coroner.

“Are you looking for me?” he asked, and he didn't seem overjoyed, but I knew that if I ran away now I'd never in this life come back here again.

“Yes,” I said, and in the very same instant – with the same kind of clarity
with which yesterday morning I felt the blanket cling to me like seaweed – I realized what I had to do. I walked into his office as if into the post office to make a payment, and in the clearest and simplest manner told him I had killed my mother.

“And what do you want from me?” he asked.

“I don't understand. What do you mean what I want? Change your report. You know what you should write in a case like this.”

“And that's what you intend to tell the police?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I'll write a prescription for you, though a specialist should do it. You're exhausted a little.”

“I don't need any medicine. Didn't you understand what I said?”

“I did. You blame yourself for your mother's death. And probably not without any reason.”

“I don't blame myself! It still isn't clear to you? Or are you afraid they'll call you on the carpet for accepting the money I gave you and you skipped the autopsy?! I wanted her to die. I knew exactly that she would die of her situation. This is what they call murder!”

“Control yourself, please. There is no law that would declare you a murderer. You may be a scoundrel but, no matter how much you'd like to believe it, formally you've committed no murder. Or if you have, it's only an ingenious invention of your own. They'll throw you out on your ass from every precinct in the country, you understand? And if you don't throw more of a hysterical fit as you are trying to do here, you won't even be admitted to one of the better mental hospitals,” he said and took out his block of prescriptions to prescribe a tranquilizer. I was already ashamed for having lost my head, but this I didn't expect, I wasn't prepared for this
there is no law that would declare you a murderer. One would think that if one murders one's mother, there must be an appropriate law to deal with one's deed.

“I don't need any medicine,” I said, trembling all over, but I controlled myself.

“I'll write it anyway. If you don't want to, you won't fill it.”

“So you think I'm ill.”

“Not ill, only exhausted. Otherwise, I believe you. That's why I'd be glad if you didn't come here anymore. Maybe I don't mind pocketing five thousand forints but I can't stand scoundrels. Even if they suffer from a temporary mental breakdown. Take the medicine; it will pass. You're not the only one.”

“I see,” I said.

“You're some kind of writer, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well then, write a nice little book. Sublimate! That would calm you down, and they will even pay you for it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well then, cheer up! This little mental factor would probably fit in smoothly with your work plans. You can also have alcohol with what I've prescribed you.”

“Yes,” I said, stood up and put away both prescriptions.

.   .   .

The first few days were pretty lousy. Of course, it occurred to me that I wouldn't leave the apartment. I did a big shopping trip, too, bought a lot of things and on top of it all had a fight with the salesgirl in the food shop. She said this wasn't a wholesale place and I should immediately put all the
biscuits back on the shelf, and I said, please stick to your job of serving me as a customer; it may have worked in the old commie system that you could get only one kilo, but those days are gone. If I feel like it, I could buy the whole food shop, along with the huge refrigerated counter and the fluorescent advertisements. I was angry that she used such a tone with me simply because she didn't like me.

“If you don't ring it up, I'll take it all without paying,” I said.

“You just try; I'll have you thrown in the slammer in a minute,” she said.

“Unfortunately, that's not so simple. And please let me have sixty packs of cigarettes, too,” I said, and the people in the line were beginning to lose patience, but everyone agreed that I was right; for my money I could buy as much mint tea and biscuits as I wanted to. Then an elderly woman told the salesgirl to do her job or she'll have her fired, and that with her attitude she'd be better off hawking stuff on the Lehel Square open-air market; so finally I could pay, but the salesgirl, just to make everybody wait, punched up separately each bag of biscuits, packet of mint tea and powdered soup, and then gave me back the change in coins of the smallest denominations.

“Count it,” she said.

“Thank you, but instead why don't you give me a box of matches for it, and ten plastic bags,” I said, and then somehow managed to pack everything, but even out on the street I continued to tremble, I was so furious; she did not have the right to treat me like that. As long a she knows nothing about me, she can't talk to me as if I were a piece of rag.

In short, I thought of not leaving the apartment, which was natural enough, but on the third or fourth day it became obvious that I couldn't
stand by that decision; even when I was blind, Judit had to take me out to the portico for a little walk. Although now I may not have seen everything as clearly as I should have, but that didn't mean I was crazy. And if by chance I saw everything more clearly than many other people, that wouldn't make me some kind of a priest. Therefore, as far as I was concerned, a self-imposed house-arrest would have been nothing but useless clowning.

.   .   .

The first few days were pretty lousy. After the conversation with Dr. Frégel, it was possible to know with reasonable accuracy that the real Tranquility Base was a bit farther away than Mare Tranquillitatis, but it might be reached more easily. And when one works, time inevitably gets stuck in the mud, similarly to the extension period added to a soccer game. Of course, I could put it this way as well: while writing, Greenwich meantime is exchanged for Davos-Dorf time and, interestingly enough, this is completely independent of whether after completing the work we choose to come off the mountain or not.

I've always been a weak person without perseverance or religious faith. For a long time I thought I had at least an uncertain and incoherent dream of some sort about beauty and order, which, after all, is not a little – but, in truth, it is. I read somewhere that there are those who create the labyrinth and those who rove in it. Well, maybe this is my only special ability: All by myself, I am suited for both of these tasks. Whether my labyrinth is worthy of, say, the one on Crete, or it is just a cleverly trimmed gardening job, is not for me to say. But to track down why and how I have raised this rather dreary structure is a task hardly anyone except me could accomplish.

Originally, all I wanted to do was write a long letter to Eszter, mainly about what had happened to my mother. Although they had seen each
other only twice, and even that was too much, I still thought Eszter should know about this. In short, I started many letters, but I got stuck already at the salutation, which is not so surprising. In the past decade and a half, I had been writing two kinds of letters. The first few began with Dear Judit, and the rest with Esteemed Mother. In other words, I have every reason to believe that, regarding perspicacity, my stories have always been more successful than my letters. But, unfortunately, Father Lázár was off the mark when he thought that there was any similarity between writing and the fourth sacrament, penance. I'd venture to say, he made a mistake almost as big as my mother who said, Son, you've no idea how many things one can forgive oneself when it's necessary.

What I have in mind is not very complicated; all one needs to understand is a half-reflecting mirror, something like the windows on new office buildings. Moreover, it's decidedly to the advantage of the parable if it is completely void of the sacral silence of churches.

If you are the person sitting inside, you have a good view of the street; you can see the rain whip up the dust on the sidewalk and you are not bored with this, even though the sight is always the same. You can see how the bus driver slams the door in someone's face again, and you cannot understand why he does that. You can also see Mr. W., as he stops again today, just for a second, to set his watch back because Mr. W. is, let's just say, notoriously tardy, and again he could think of no better way of dealing with this than to set his watch to show exactly eight o'clock, while in fact it is ten after eight. Naturally, you may also know that if Mr. W. were a bus driver, for example, he would never slam the door in anyone's face, but that, regarding our story, is practically irrelevant. All we are concerned with is that the person sitting inside has a fairly good view of everything.