A Book of Memories (15 page)

When she'd stop at the door of an afternoon, she would say nothing, as though she knew that her shrill voice would only give her away, and rousing our grandmother would have meant depriving herself of the joys and agonies of possible games, the games of our secret complicity; she must have known this, though her memory did not seem to function or, if it did, worked most peculiarly, since there was no rational way to account for what she remembered or what she forgot; she could eat only with her hands, and though adults tried at every meal to train her to use utensils, she didn't catch on, forks and spoons simply fell from her hand, she didn't understand why she had to keep holding them; yet our names, for example, she did remember, she called everyone by their right name, and she was also toilet-trained, and if accidentally she wet or made in her pants, she would sit in a corner for hours, whimpering inconsolably, imposing on herself the punishment Grandmother had devised for her long ago, and there seemed to be an act of goodwill in this self-punishment, a great gesture of goodwill toward us all; although I could not make her learn numbers
—we'd study them and she'd promptly forget them—and she had problems recognizing and distinguishing colors, she was always very cooperative, always willing to start afresh, and eager to please us; her strained exertions were quite touching to see, as when she looked for an oft-used everyday word and knit her brow in intense concentration, and would at first fail, because her language, after all, was not words, but then, when the sought-after word or expression did come to her lips in the form of a triumphant scream and she herself could hear it and then be able to identify it, her face lit up with her sweetest smile, her happiest laugh, a smile and laugh of utter bliss the likes of which we would probably never experience.

For while there was nothing in her eyes one could take for expressions of feeling or emotion, her smile and laugh may have been the language she used to communicate with us, the only language she spoke; it was hers, a language for the initiated, to be sure, but perhaps more beautiful and superior to our own because its single though endlessly modifiable word conveyed pure joy of being.

One day I noticed a pin on my desk, an ordinary pin; I had no idea how it got there, but there it was, at the bottom of the deep corridor formed by my scattered books and notebooks, gleaming just bright enough to be noticed on the brown wood; I couldn't really say why then I kept my eye on it for days or why I was so careful not to move it while turning pages in my books or while reading, writing, or just aimlessly shuffling my things, packing and unpacking my schoolbag; I may have also thought that it would disappear as unexpectedly as it had appeared, but no, it would be there again the next day; that afternoon the lamp with the red shade was turned on, though it wasn't quite dark yet, she was standing in the shadows and, looking out from the light cast by the lamp, I more or less sensed her presence in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon, and she, blinded by the light and still groggy from sleep, could not have seen me very clearly; a few more soft tapping sounds were heard from the kitchen and then the silence was complete; I knew the silence would last for another half hour, so the game we had both been waiting for could begin, and we could start it with anything at all; the pin was still on my desk
—all I had to do was to make the first move and the rest would follow by itself—so with my fingernails I picked up the pin by its head; I simply wanted to show it to her, to have her see it; she began to smile, most likely getting ready to laugh her most intimate laugh, reluctantly at first, because she was afraid of me and had to overcome this fear each time anew, and I was also afraid of her; but we didn't have much time and I knew I couldn't get out of it anymore, she wouldn't let me; if she didn't make the first move, I would, and if I didn't, then she would; in this we were at each other's mercy.

Later, discovering a true, deep, and therefore not easily explained attraction, I amassed a respectable collection of these pins, carefully storing them away, and not just those that turned up accidentally; after a while I began to look for them, track them down, hunt for them; strangely enough, once it became an obsession, I kept finding them everywhere, which was strange, since I'd never remembered them turning up before so conspicuously and persistently; now I'd come across them in the most unlikely places: in pillows, in cracks, in coat linings, on the street, in the upholstered armrest of an easy chair
—with a flash and a prick, they would announce their presence; I began to classify them, having discovered the many different kinds, and as a test I would prick my finger and let it bleed a little; there were all sorts of pins: long and short, with round heads or flat, with heads of colored pearl; rusty pins, stainless-steel pins, straight pins and spear-shaped pins—and they all pricked differently; but that afternoon I had only that plain, long, round-headed one that had landed so mysteriously on my desk that I even had asked my father about it when he happened to stop in my room one evening, and he looked amazed, even baffled, as he bent over, not comprehending what I was showing him; pushing back his straight blond hair, which kept falling in his eyes, his gesture unconscious yet annoyed, he told me gruffly not to bother him with my silly games; this pin, then, the original piece of what later became my collection, I was just showing to her, with no special intention, as if I had to show it to everyone; I simply held it up to the light, and then my little sister took the crucial first step and approached the pin, and that made me move, though still with no specific purpose; I slid off my chair and slipped under the desk.

I may be trembling even more now, as this confession compels me to evoke a series of moves long completed and irrevocably ingrained in me.

Fear is primordial, immeasurable, and seems real only when put into words; it's what we hope is ephemeral but what proves to be permanently alive.

I was trembling quietly then, but not out of fear, and that makes all the difference
—not this dark, faltering feeling I have now, but a simple excitement, light, clear, and pure, the kind we experience when placing our limbs beyond the influence of our will, letting insidious desires have free play; for a long while nothing happened; it was warm and dark under the desk, a little like sitting in an overturned cardboard box whose open end, like a mouth, was waiting for her arrival, waiting to swallow her up.

I was conscious of the smell of the wood, that raw smell furniture never loses completely, reminding one of origins, giving one a sense of security, protection, and permanence; I could even smell the characteristic dusty-paper smell of the prosecutor's office (my desk was a superannuated government issue which Father had brought home for me one day); she wasn't moving, but I knew she would come, because after the first move there was always a tension that demanded release and completion
—that was our game; then I heard her heavy, clumsy footsteps, she was walking as if she not only had to bear the weight of her body but had to keep moving it forward.

I was sitting like a spider under the farthest corner of my crate-like desk, pinching the head of the pin between my nails, pointing its tiny tip in her direction, when her long white nightshirt appeared, she dropped to her knees, and on her face there was the broadest of grins; I can say that at that moment I was free of all emotion, though it might be argued that the opposite was true, that the moment distilled all my possible emotions; she began to crawl so fast toward me that I thought she wanted to pounce on me, but after a few hasty moves her nightshirt caught under her knees and wouldn't let her go on; suddenly losing her balance, she bumped her forehead into the edge of the desk and fell forward, her head hitting the floor with a thud; I did not stir; according to the secret rules of cruelty she had to reach me unaided.

Her resourcefulness was as unpredictable as her memory; she straightened out, grinned even more broadly and eagerly, if that was possible, as if nothing had happened at all, and with a very natural movement pulled her nightshirt from under her knees, quite casually; I said very natural movement, because this time she found a natural connection between the nightshirt and her fall, while in other, much simpler and more transparent situations, she had not made the connections
—for example, wanting to have some fruit, she could quite easily climb up a tree but couldn't come down; she would sit on a swaying branch until somebody noticed her, hold on tight and whimper quietly, though it was no more difficult to come down than to climb up—at times she crept so high that we had to use a ladder to get her down; perhaps only joy, the desire for pleasure, made her resourceful, and as soon as she had satisfied her desire, the object of which may have been a red cherry, a shimmering peach, or even myself, her memory went dark, her resourcefulness expired, and she returned to a world in which objects existed in isolation: a chair was a chair only if someone sat on it, a table was a table only if her plate was placed on it; for her there was no connection between the events that happened around her, which simply happened if they happened, and at most may have blended into one another; it was her impossibly exaggerated grin and her eyes widening into unblinking immobility that suggested a desire to impose some order; now on her bare knees she was creeping closer and closer until she was completely under the desk, where she felt protected, where no one could find out what we were up to; in my own way, I must have been just as blinded by desires as she; she began to pant excitedly and I was breathing louder, too; my hearing sharpened by the straining senses: I could hear, like some strange music, the separate yet harmonious rhythms of our breathing, and if I hadn't raised my hand to point the pin straight at her eyes—her eyeball simply attracted the tip of the pin— she probably would have flung herself on me, for she liked to wrestle, and she didn't shrink back now, her grin didn't fade, either, but remained as it was; hoping for some resolution, she paused for a moment, catching her breath.

She did not flinch, her lids did not flutter, even though the pin point was only a few centimeters from the glistening curve of her eyeball. And my hand didn't move either, I only felt my mouth opening slowly, because I really didn't want to do anything to her, but there she was, wide-open, defenseless, and behind the visible part of her there may have been another being whose senses were more alive, who would have flinched, whose lids would have fluttered, who would have been afraid; if the slightest thing were to happen at that moment, like her hand accidentally swinging toward me or mine moving just a bit forward, who knows what would have been there to prevent the most dreadful end; but there was something, an invisible obstacle, a wall, a mere shade, something that seemed to be the manifestation of a force outside me and just as independent of my most mysterious and secret intentions as it was somehow bound up with them, even if I myself was unaware of them, of my curiosity, which had always triumphed over everything in me
—except now!—but even if the thing were to have happened, I could not fault myself, because the insatiable desire to explore what lay behind the seemingly indifferent exterior of things and phenomena, to make the indifference speak and bleed, to conquer it, to make it my own, as I had done with Krisztián's lips and with so many lips after his—this desire made me the victim of that strange outside force; but the dreadful thing could not happen, although I am not sure that what happened instead did not turn out to be even more dreadful.

The frozen, unpromising moment passed, and her body plopped down, lightly, resting on her heels. The new distance between us had a sobering effect. The pin, still pressed tightly between my fingers, was nothing but the evidence of my absurd inanity, a bit of foolishness to be dismissed with a shrug, something that hadn't happened though it could have; I had to close my mouth again; once again I had to listen to the stupid excitement of my own breathing, and hers, too, which kindled in me a kind of simple and ordinary anger, therefore completely mine, mine alone; I failed to reach her; I was locked again in my own solitude; but I did reach after her, just as she was moving away, and with a single movement jabbed the pin into her naked thigh.

And once again nothing happened; she drew back, her body taut, no sound passed her lips; it was as if a moment ago we had been standing on the heights and now were sinking into the depths; she stopped breathing, but not from pain; her nightgown rode up to her belly and exposed the open slit between her outspread thighs, the darkened orifice between two firm, reddish mounds
—my pin took aim; I couldn't not do it, but the pin did not prick or even touch the skin, it penetrated the opening. Then I stabbed her in the thigh again.

Not as lightly as before but hard and deep; she screamed; I could see her grin vanish, as if the physical pain had also ripped an invisible veil; and I could also see her look, seeking refuge, but by then she was upon me.

There was no doubt of it, the dark coat on the rack could mean only one thing: a guest had arrived, an unusual guest at that, because the coat was stern-looking, grim, quite unlike the coat that usually hung on that rack, so shabby and threadbare I didn't even feel like doing what I usually did when left alone with strange coats in the hallway and go through the pockets and, if I found some loose change, cling to the wall, listen for noises, wait for the right moment, and then steal a few fillers or forints.

This time I did not hear any strange noises or anyone talking, everything seemed normal, so I simply opened the door and, without fully comprehending my own surprise, took a few steps toward the bed.

A stranger was kneeling in front of the bed. He was holding Mother's hand as it lay on the coverlet, bending over it; he was crying, his back and shoulders shaking; while he kept kissing the hand, with her free hand Mother was holding the man's head; her fingers sank into the stranger's short-cropped, almost completely white hair, as if wanting to pull him closer by his hair, but gently, consolingly.