Tranquility (5 page)

“And cowardly enough to relinquish this distorted image because that would be the end of those heartrending pieces of writing.”

“You see how well we are progressing.”

“Of course we are. I am following your logic. And most of it is correct, too. Only the scene with the sales clerk is off. For one thing, I never buy candy in a store. For another, I think we all have been cheated. And until I lose my mind, this is what I must think and not that I am the only one who has been cheated.”

“Or until you get sick one morning in front of the mirror. I'm afraid someone with such a clear image of God hasn't a chance to attain faith until something has filled his mouth with mud.”

“Maybe so,” I said. I poured. We drank. He poured again.

“This is the last glass. I'd like to take the 8:30 train.”

“There is a nonstop at nine. I'll take you to the station.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Incidentally, Father, you have no idea how grateful I'd be if between a Maggi celery soup and a glass of ceremonial wine I could finally lose my conviction about the total absence of divine providence. Because this conviction costs me a lot.”

“I haven't the slightest doubt about that.”

“I'd say I almost envy people for whom it's enough to take the wrong book off the shelf in the library.”

“But that's different. It's always easier for people above whom the sky is still empty than for those who have already planted their own caricature up there.”

“I can't come up with anything better, Father. I cannot endow the Lord with certain virtues when I don't possess even the germs of those virtues. So, I'm afraid I must continue with this caricature for a little while longer.”

“Of course. I told you I didn't mind waiting. Would you like some pajamas?”

“Maybe a blanket.”

“There's one in the closet. Lay it over the stove for a little bit; that's what I usually do.”

.   .   .

In the morning, I awoke to the sight of a cassocked man standing by my bedside, with his thumb touching my forehead as if to christen me or to administer extreme unction. For a few seconds I searched for the remainders of the day before, trying to figure out where I was and who this man was. I must have been in the middle of a nightmare when I was startled awake by the priest's touch, and his fingers erased everything, which didn't please me because no matter how lousy they are, I am very devoted to my dreams.

“Wake up. I have already dispensed the penance for all of yesterday's profanities. On top of it all, twelve people received Holy Communion – and all of them are still alive,” he said, to which I remarked that this was a lucky village because its priest believed in God. During coffee, I asked him whether he meant the cross he drew on my forehead to be a first or last sacrament.

“Does it make a difference to you?” he asked.

“It doesn't. But sometimes one would like to believe that maybe it does,” I said.

.   .   .

The shortest route to the station was through the village's Gypsy row. Among half-collapsed and half-built hovels, the priest drove his jeep around puddles while leaning on his horn all the time to scare off the half-naked children running alongside the vehicle. Some of them didn't even have underpants; bare-assed and barefoot they were trotting in the jeep's wake. The lucky ones held onto the door handle and grinned at us through the window; the others, hopping from stone to stone that stuck out of the huge puddles, appeared to be walking on water. But above their naked loins, they all wore the same red sweater as I did, because five hundred of those had arrived in last week's Dutch relief shipment, and this was eerier than the houses roofed with plastic sheets instead of tiles. These red relief sweaters were more ominous than the windows covered with blankets, than the fires burning in the three-walled rooms, than the idle women sitting on concrete steps leading nowhere; a set of stairs leading nowhere is still something very human.

.   .   .

I felt nauseated, and at first I thought it was because of the jolting jeep or at the sight of the sea of red relief sweaters, but the next moment I recalled every small detail of my dream at dawn. I was sitting in my hut on my makeshift bed, listening to the crackling of the logs in the potbelly stove; through the small window I observed the day dawning over the woods, and waited for work to begin. Then the bloodhounds began to stir in their den. Growling, they pawed the ground, worried the bare bones, chewed on the spines whose marrow had long dried out, looking for leftover bits
as they did every dawn. I put on my heavy coat, picked up the hooked cane and walked behind the hut to the corpse pit for their daily portion. That was my job: to feed the hounds twice a day and to not ask who the corpses had been. True, there was nobody to ask. They filled the pit once a week, always at night. By the time I awoke in the morning, all the dead women and children would be in the pit. Strictly speaking, all the corpses were beautiful, only their stillness and sweetish smell gave them away. I could reach down for any one of them, stick my hook into the neck, cradle the body in my arms, as I would a sleeping lover or a sick child, and then take it across to the hounds' pit at the far end of the clearing. During the trek of a few hundred steps, I could delight to my heart's content in the cool motionlessness of the corpses. I knew that while walking on the path I could think and feel whatever I wanted to. Nobody could say anything about that, no regulation could have any influence on me. Some of the corpses I took silently from one pit to the other, but to some I told stories, about the forest for example, that because of lichen the trees looked as if they were moldy, and that our forest, as opposed to other forests, had no network of roots. Look, I said to an old woman and with my foot I cleared away some of the dead leaves. Look at it, only boards, no need to be afraid. Of course, I knew she wasn't afraid because she was dead. That it was all the same to her. That nothing would stop me from throwing her to the hounds; still, taking her like this was very different from dragging her by her feet to the pit. I did try doing that once or twice, but I didn't like it. Now I was waltzing with a little girl because I saw that that's what she wanted to do most. I reddened her lips with a cranberry, her barely eight-year-old body was lighter than a cartload of autumn leaves and as we whirled around, the wind blew her hair into my face. One-two-three, one-two-three, we waltzed our way to the bloodhounds, and I was fully aware of my duty all
along, that at the rim of the pit, from a height of about six feet, I'd have to let go of her too. That I could make no exceptions, not even of her. But, just before I hurled her down among the dogs with their snapping teeth, she opened her eyes and asked that if I could dance so beautifully, why am I doing this kind of work? To which I replied that I know no other work, and I do have to make a living somehow. I am not fit for anything else; that's why they put me here, in the feeding section, I said, and then, while still dancing, I let go of her waist; but she didn't plunge down like other corpses, but rather she floated, like a feather, and she was laughing all the while, and the hounds were mauling and tearing her to pieces and the forest was still resounding with her laughter. And suddenly I felt I was going out of my mind. “Let her go!” I screamed at the dogs, and pelted them with stones and sticks. “This one is still alive!” I howled. “You'll all die if you eat her!” I screamed, but they kept tearing, lacerating and dismembering her, the girl continued laughing and her blood filled the decaying forest with the scent of mint. “You miserable slut!” I howled. “You won't make a murderer out of me!” I screamed, and began to run among the trees, though I knew well that it made no sense, and mud was pouring from my mouth.

.   .   .

“The sight of poverty affects you this much?” asked the priest, but with my hand I indicated that I didn't want to discuss it; and I didn't even feel the usual shame that overtakes me whenever I realize that what goes on inside me blocks out everything on the outside. And one should be careful about things like that; one should have at least a sense of shame. Still, I liked telling Mr. Rosenburg I had no need for another fountain pen, even though that statement differed little from the Dutch garment industry's claim that it had no need for these five hundred grade B sweaters.

.   .   .

“Let's hurry,” I said, and left the Gypsy row behind me – together with its horse-flaying men, staircases leading nowhere, and relief-sweater-clad brats – as I would a traveling circus whose only attraction is an emaciated lion lapping milk from a washbowl.

I had no roundtrip ticket, because for fifteen years I had been telling every cashier I wanted one-way only. Judit must have said the same thing to one of the dockworkers in some Adriatic port when, with only a change of underwear and her violin under her arms, she offered him a thousand dollars and appealed to his humanity to find a tiny place for her on his tanker, among products of the Yugoslav heavy industry. In short, at the cashier's it occurred to me that on the way home, too, I'd have no choice but to emphasize my request for a one way only. Now it really makes no difference, I thought, and quickly paid for it because the train was shrieking already.

“Take this with you,” said the priest when I was already on the steps of the train, and thrust a black leather-bound tome into my hand.

“The
Confessions
?” I asked.

“Don't be funny. You've never even heard of the author of this one.”

“That's good,” I said, and put the book in my jacket pocket. “So you're determined to keep on waiting.”

“Don't worry. I've got plenty of things to kill time with.”

“Maybe you were right. Maybe our mouths should first be filled to the brim with mud. And then perhaps we could raise our hearts to the Lord.”

“No need trying to raise it. It will rise by itself.”

.   .   .

Hardly anybody travels on these Monday morning trains. No workers, holiday-makers, or contraband dealers hastening to the outskirt markets, only one or two briefcase-toting salesmen, recent beginners who take the train for now but within a year, according to their bosses, will make enough for a Suzuki Swift and then in the new car they'll take their gilded cutlery sets to Budapest and the family to Lake Balaton. “Like hot cakes, I'm telling you, all those salesgirls in the boulevard boutiques will snap them up, this is just the season for them. Why are you so damn shiftless? What do you mean you can't put down a deposit for fifty lousy sets of cutlery? Don't tell me any stories about your electric bill, stand on your own two feet, man! Seize the opportunity!” The salesgirls in the boutiques, however, start the day by hanging out signs for salesmen to stay away, and the ones who don't bother with the signs already own a gilded, gift-cased cutlery set, and are waiting for a different salesman peddling multi-purpose cosmetics and underwear with a panther design, which has proved itself so well – Robi literally ripped it to pieces. Well, one or two of this kind of salesman take these trains, as well as a few visitors with their flowers and boxed refreshments on their way to a hospital. There are also compensation-seekers, their pockets bulging with old contracts – written with indelible pencil about the three gold crowns' worth of plough-land in question – or depositions from their fellow POWs stating that after twelve years of captivity they walked home together all the way from the shores of the river Yenisey. “Where, for the sake of old God's balls, could I get you a letter of discharge?! Anybody whose hands didn't freeze off had to sign a piece of paper that he was never there, and then the guard kicked us in the ass at the lager's gate, telling us to get the hell out of there; we wouldn't get on the truck, were afraid of getting shot in the back, get it? Are you out of your mind, young man? You think it was a homo-ring that was ripped
out of my ear? Don't you quote the law to me, just look at this: this is
not
the place of a homo-ring; this is where a rat chewed part of my ear off, in the barracks! And it's too bad I didn't wake up, because if I did, we could have eaten some meat, too!” In short, mostly this kind of people took the Monday morning trains. It was harder to find empty compartments than at dawn with the commuting workers, or on weekends with the local tourists; both groups like to be with their own kind; sixteen of them would squeeze into eight seats so they can curse their foreman or physics teacher while the bottle is making its round and music blares from some tape-recorder. However, these beginning salesmen, hospital visitors, and compensation seekers want to be alone; they draw the curtains, at every stop they pretend to be asleep so the new arrivals won't bother them and if the compartment door latch works they turn that too, so only the conductor can get in.

.   .   .

I did find an empty compartment in the last car. I closed the door, turned the latch, drew the curtain, and then I thought I had better put the story of the priest Albert Mohos into the yellow file, where I kept all my misbegotten creations. Judit's erstwhile sheet-music case became the dunce's bench, the pillory of fiascoes, because I could never get myself to commit these awkward stories either to the waste bin or to the oven. In fact, I kept the yellow dossier on my desk, among the rest of the manuscripts, proofs, and other papers, so that in my absence my mother could read them to her heart's content. That's how we conversed. If I was at home, she hardly ever crossed my threshold, but once I left she immediately rummaged through everything, filled my room with the heavy fragrance of her makeup, spilled her mint tea and left behind some of her fallen hair. My manuscripts were
sticky with smeared lipstick and eyeliner because she had the habit of alternately licking her fingers and rubbing her eyes. I never mentioned these telltale signs to her; after all, I could have locked up my writings in the drawers, but then she wouldn't have been the first one to read them.