Tranquility (9 page)

Therefore, it's very understandable, Mother, that you got scared shitless of Eszter. That you would have preferred if those disposable little maps
continued to accumulate, along with the dried-out farewell roses, locks of blonde hair, and the rhyming sonnets written on my back. That the never to be used again telephone numbers, little crosses, golden hearts, and Stars of David torn from their chains kept accumulating, along with the graduation photos and the zodiac medals; Pisces and Scorpions in equal numbers, which is no coincidence, Mother. And of course there would be the same amount from all the other signs, and almost every one of them would come with some piece of underwear, but at least with a stretched-out audio cassette of Piaf's chansons.

A nothing-collection like this, Mother, is undoubtedly more reassuring than Eszter. Eszter versus a little golden heart or an Orwo cassette – with secretly recorded heavy breathing on the B-side – that they slip into your pocket while saying goodbye, a practical souvenir, so you'll have some sound to jerk off to when you're away from Angyalföld. “You'll think of me while doing it, won't you?” And I'd lie: of course I will, because in a situation like this there is nothing more humiliating than telling the truth. There is no excuse for being repulsed by the same touch which we so impatiently anticipated only a couple of hours earlier while riding the trolleybus or being driven in a Polskifiat, because for more than six months no woman had dragged us to her sublet room in Újpest or to her villa on Sas Mountain.

In short, even if after ejaculation some smooth muscle keeps pumping only nothing into one's brain, somehow one still cannot categorically deny ever wanting to listen again to the squeals recorded on the B-side. And that one would think of nothing else except the fluorescent light of a State Lottery advertisement filtering into the room and how, after coitus, this same light painted the whole room the color of mildew. Just as the sonnets
written on one's back do not remind one of anything but the scratching of the pencil's tip, and a half-torn collar reminds one only that this used to be one's best shirt. But I admit, Mother, that the decade of one-night-stand lovers was much more reassuring than Eszter's presence.

.   .   .

At Rákosrendező, three men came in and sat down in the compartment; they were railroad workers who travel by train even within the city limits. They would take one of the passenger trains to the Keleti for a brake shoe or to borrow some tools, then spend time in the cafeteria, have a couple of spritzers until the next train came to take them back; doing it like this, the trip takes about an hour and a half, but nobody asks any questions. The train rides are figured into the workday, because railroad workers feel about buses or trolleybuses the way sailors feel about dry land: their stomachs begin to grow queasy only when they dock. Well, railroad workers have a similar aversion to public transportation. I know this from a conductor who told me that he, for example, couldn't sleep with a pillow. For thirty years, his wife's been making his bed properly, but for the same thirty years he's been throwing the pillow to the floor and replacing it with his leather service bag under his head, just as he'd gotten used to in his youth. And the wife works in the Dawn Hotels, so you can't very well expect her not to put the pillow where it belongs, because habit is a powerful master. In short, thank God, they had one fight in all of their thirty years, and that was on their first summer vacation that was ruined because he didn't have his service bag with him and he couldn't sleep for four straight nights in the Hungarian Trade Unions' holiday resort. He was tossing and turning all night, punched and folded the pillow this way and that, tried his wife's straw basket in which they carried their blanket to the beach, but it was
no use, so on the fifth day they went home. The new marriage did suffer from this incident, but later the wife realized she was wrong, because no conductor in the world could sleep without his service bag.

Another time, I was talking to an engine driver who was pensioned off early because after his first suicide he could not get back on his engine. “My hand would lock in a cramp, I simply couldn't let go of the guard rail, do you understand? I was standing there on the steps and just cried even though the light changed to green. Then the traffic manager and the stationmaster showed up and they pried my fingers off the metal rod. The same day the doctor sent me to Pest to the MÁV hospital, even though most engineers kill five or six people on average. This is calculated into the job. During training, they told us not to make a big deal out of things like that, because some people throw themselves in front of trains like deer or rabbits do, and that's
their
problem. It's none of our business if that's what turns somebody on. The best thing to do is to honk your horn and move on as if nothing had happened, and then you won't get into trouble. But I didn't even sound my horn. I froze, do you understand? Past the turn at Tatabánya, that woman was standing there with two kids, she wasn't even pressing them to herself, they just stood there next to one other like poplars, and all three of them were looking into my eyes, do you understand? That six-year-old girl looked at me as she would a Christmas tree loaded down with gifts. And the next day's paper showed the photos taken at the scene, and printed an article about mothers of this kind; the reporter empathized with the engineer who was obviously shaken by the incident. I wanted to find the reporter so I could ask him if he ever saw a mother standing on the tracks with two children. I wanted to demand he write a correction. I wanted him to write that they stood there like poplars and
that I didn't sound the horn; but my colleagues told me to forget it. Don't get involved, they said, you've got enough problems as it is, and you know damn well it wouldn't have helped even if you did honk at them. And the next day I could not continue, my hand stuck to the guard-rail along the steps of the engine, and they pensioned me off. Since then I've been raising mushrooms in the cellar.” And I asked this engine driver why he still traveled by train, and he said that it's not the same as with cigarettes, young man, that we'll stop smoking at New Year's. A real railroad man cannot live without the train. I have my free pass and every Sunday I take the passenger train to Debrecen or Miskolc, and then come home with the evening train because I have nothing to do at either place.

.   .   .

When the three railroad workers came into the compartment, I quickly took out the book I had received from the priest so that nestling into the corner I could pretend to be reading because I didn't feel like talking to anybody and people usually do not bother a person who reads. They don't usually ask him where he is going, where he is coming from and whether he has a family and things like that. A person with a book in hand is not actually present. There is no need to offer him cookies or anything to drink, because the book makes him invisible. People don't even lower their voices next to a reader. In short, I took out the book; maybe I was a little curious to know what book Father Lázár had given me instead of the
Confessions
, and what made him so sure I hadn't ever heard of its author. Not that I am too familiar with the literature of the Church, Father, but it's better to state something like that as a possibility rather than as a certainty. As I leafed through the book, I felt only a certain shame for having made someone believe, in my own way, that from the depths of the concrete tabernacle,
something might turn up that would please God more than a chaliceful of poisoned wafers. I kept flipping the blank pages of the leather-bound notebook, but felt nothing save for that vague sense of shame. I'm afraid, Father, that I will disappoint you, the way the Gypsy kids disappoint the Dutch relief program. All those sweaters are muddy already, I thought. From now on, they'll be wearing those sweaters while skinning the stolen horses or while sitting on the steps leading nowhere. Which may not be quite as big a problem as we might think, I thought. It is true though that for the mariner who does not know the way to the port of his destination, no winds are favorable, but so long as there is horsemeat to eat, why should we be so curious about dry land, I thought. Although this notebook of blank pages is a very kind, even imaginative souvenir, the A-4 paper I use also starts out as pure and clean, I thought. And I have reason to believe, Father, that even Cain's wheat is more pleasing to the Almighty than anything I will ever commit to paper. And this is as it should be, the Good Lord cannot be blamed for this. The Good Lord cannot help it if even at my best I am only like some resonating ore. Because He is responsible either for a whole lot of things or for hardly anything at all, and I suggest we stay with the latter, Father.

.   .   .

Go blind, I told myself at age ten and stumbled around the apartment with my eyes open as if I really couldn't see. For three days, I missed the cup when pouring tea and kept bumping into the doorpost. And I didn't even have to make an effort. I could see, but that didn't bother me too much. Only Judit knew what was up.

“I'm blind, but don't tell anyone,” I said.

“All right,” she said and continued to rehearse for the school concert,
and I looked through my mother as if through milk glass while she was putting on her fur coat. She quickly took some cold cuts and cheese out of the fridge and ran off to the theater.

“The theater is dark on Monday,” said ten-year-old Judit.

“They're probably rehearsing; there's an opening on Friday,” I said, also ten years old.

“On Monday there is no rehearsal either. Monday is the actors' Sunday, like Saturday is the Jews' Sunday.”

“Then today must not be Monday,” I said, to which she responded by putting down her violin and bringing over the calendar from our mother's desk.

“Take a look, Monday,” she said.

“I can't see,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said. “Here it is, Monday, at eight in the evening, TOM.”

“There you are:
Tragedy of Man
.”

“Wrong; TOM is her code for Tamás Effenbach,” she said.

“
The Tragedy of Man
,” I said.

“Effenbach. Anyway,
The Tragedy of Man
was banned when the holders of the Gorki subscription series gave a standing ovation to the phalanstery scene.”

“Then it must be somebody else. She promised that Effenbach would never come here again.”

“They were only rehearsing; why does it bother you if they rehearse at home? You wouldn't run up to the stage to make them stop, would you?”

“Because I can't sleep when they're screaming. And she shouldn't be lying to me. I don't want my mother to be a liar. Besides, Effenbach is not even an actor, just a journalist.”

“A critic. That's almost an actor,” she said.

“I don't care. At night, he should rehearse alone.”

Holding me by the hand, Judit led me into the kitchen, spread cheese on a roll, which she handed to me as if I were genuinely blind, and then the door opened and our mother walked in; but she didn't even say hello or take off her fur coat, she simply rushed into the bathroom.

“See, there is no show tonight,” Judit said, and we stopped eating and went to our room.

“Don't practice now, she's got a migraine,” I said.

“Let's play cards,” she said.

“I can't,” I said.

“Then dominoes. You can feel them with your fingers.”

In about ten minutes Mother came into our room, though, one hand holding a wet terrycloth towel to her pulsing temple, the other on the doorknob, her tendons taut, as when one grasps a knife real hard, and her hands looked even more beautiful that way, and for a moment I forgot I was blind. That was the only moment I wavered but, recovering immediately, I looked through her as through a milk glass pane. I looked not into her eyes, but somewhere far beyond them.

“Don't you dare interfere with my life! I will not be humiliated again because of my snotty little son!” she said and slammed the door behind her.

“That's because of Effenbach,” Judit said.

“Doesn't matter. At least he won't come here anymore. Are you going to help me put on my pajamas?”

“How long will you continue to be blind?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Why can't you be deaf instead? She'd notice that more quickly.”

“I'm not sure. And then we couldn't have a conversation.”

“But you can't be blind in school.”

“I'm not going. In the morning I'll make my nose bleed with potassium permanganate.”

“You want me to stay home with you? I have to practice anyway.”

“No. You'd better go. I don't like Vivaldi.”

“He's not bad, you know,” she said. “You can't read if you're blind. Actually, you can't do anything. As a deafy, you could read, and you wouldn't hear me practice.”

“Then they'd wash out my ears. Or puncture it, like they did to Laci Örvös before Christmas.”

“She'll take you to the doctor, anyway.”

“But they only look inside with a light and give you eye drops.”

“How do you know?”

“Elemér told me when he got his glasses. They widen the pupils with some kind of eye drops and for a whole day your vision is hazy, like when you have tears in your eyes.”