Satantango (5 page)

now.” Petrina leans against the wall. “Listen here, old friend, master, savior, slave driver! You’ll be the death of me! I am frozen through, I’m hungry, I want to find somewhere warm where I can dry out and eat and I have no desire at all, God knows, to tramp out to the estate in this foul weather, in fact I am quite disinclined to follow you, to run after you like a lunatic, damn your already damned soul! Damn it!” Irimiás gives a wave and replies indifferently, “If you don’t want to stay with me go where you please.” And he is gone. “Where are you going? Where are you off to now?” Petrina shouts after him in anger, setting off to follow him. “Where would you go without me? . . . Stop for a second. Come on!” The rain eases off a little as they leave the town. Night descends. No stars, no moon. At the Elek crossroads, a hundred yards ahead of them, a shadow sways; only later do they discover it is a man in a trenchcoat; he enters a field and the darkness swallows him. On either side of the highway there are gloomy patches of woodland as far as the eye can see, mud covering everything and, since the fading light blurs all clear outlines, consuming all traces of color, stable forms begin to move while things that should move stand as if petrified, so the whole highway is like a strange vessel run aground, idling and rocking on a muddy ocean. Not a bird is stirring to leave its mark on the sky that has hardened to a solid mass that, like a morning mist, hovers above the ground, only a solitary frightened deer rises and sinks in the distance — as if the mud itself were breathing — preparing to flee in the far distance. “Dear God!” Petrina sighs. “When I think it will be morning before we get there I get cramp in my legs! Why didn’t we ask Steigerwald if we could borrow his truck? And that coat too! What am I? A circus strongman??!” Irimiás stops, puts his foot up on a milestone, pulls out a cigarette, they both take one, and light them using their hands as shelter. “Can I ask you something, killer?” “What?” “Why are we going to the estate?” “Why? Have you anywhere to sleep? Do you have anything to eat? Money? Either you stop your eternal whining or I strangle you.” “OK. Fine. I understand, this much anyway. But tomorrow we got to go back, haven’t we?” Irimiás grinds his teeth but says nothing. Petrina gives another sigh. “Look friend, you really could have thought of something else with that clever head of yours! I don’t want to stay with those people the way I am. I can’t stand being in one place. Petrina was born under open skies, that’s where he has lived all his life and that’s where he’ll die.” Irimiás dismisses him with a bitter gesture: “We’re in the shit, friend. There’s nothing we can do about that for a while. We have to stay with them.” Petrina wrings his hands. “Master! Please don’t say things like that! My heart is already pounding.” “OK, OK, don’t crap in your pants. We’ll take their money then we’ll move on. We’ll manage somehow . . .” They set off again. “You think they have money?” Petrina asks anxiously. “Peasants always have something.” They proceed without speaking, mile after mile, they must be roughly half way between the turn-off and the local bar; occasionally a star twinkles in front of them only to vanish again in the dense dark; sometimes the moon shines through the mist and, like the two exhausted figures on the paved road below, escapes with them across the celestial battlefield, pushing its way past every obstacle towards its target, right until dawn. “I wonder what the bumpkins will say when they see us.” “It’ll be surprise,” Irimiás replies over his shoulder. Petrina picks up the pace. “What makes you think they’ll be there at all?” he asks in his anxiety. “I figure they’ll have made tracks ages ago. They must have that much intelligence.” “Intelligence?” grins Irimiás. “Them? Servants is what they were and that’s what they’ll remain until they die. They’ll be sitting in the kitchen, shitting themselves in the corner, taking the odd look out of the window to see what the others are doing. I know these people like the back of my hand.” “I don’t know how you can be so sure of that, friend,” says Petrina. “My hunch is that there won’t be anyone there. Empty houses, the tiles fallen or stolen, at best one or two starved rats in the mill . . .” “No-o-o,” Irimiás confidently retorts. “They’ll be sitting in exactly the same place, on the same filthy stools, stuffing themselves with the same filthy spuds and paprika every night, having no idea what’s happened. They’ll be eyeing each other suspiciously, only breaking the silence to belch. They are waiting. They’re waiting patiently, like the long-suffering lot they are, in the firm conviction that someone has conned them. They are waiting, belly to the ground, like cats at pig-killing time, hoping for scraps. They are like servants that work at a castle where the master has shot himself: they hang around at an utter loss as to what to do . . .” “Enough poetry, boss, I am terrified enough already!” Petrina tries to calm himself while pressing his rumbling stomach. But Irimiás pays him no attention, he’s on a roll. “They are slaves who have lost their master but can’t live without what they call pride, honor and courage. That’s what keeps their souls in place even if at the back of their thick skulls they sense these qualities aren’t their own, that they’ve simply enjoyed living in the shadow of their masters . . .” “Enough,” Petrina groans and rubs his eyes because the water keeps running down his flat forehead: “Look, don’t be cross, but I just can’t bear listening to such stuff right now! . . . You can tell me all about them tomorrow, for now I’d sooner you talked about a good steaming bowl of bean soup!” But Irimiás ignores this too and goes on undisturbed. “Then, wherever the shadow falls they follow, like a flock of sheep, because they can’t do without a shadow, just as they can’t do without pomp and splendor either (“For God’s sake! Cut it out old man, please! . . .” Petrina cries in his agony), they’ll do anything not to be left alone with the remnants of pomp and splendor, because when they are left alone they go mad: like mad dogs they fall on whatever remains and tear it to bits. Give them a well-heated room, a cauldron bubbling with paprika stew, a few dogs, and they’ll be dancing on the table every night, and even happier under warm bedclothes, panting away, with a tasty piece of the neighbor’s stout wife to tuck into . . . Are you listening to me Petrina?” “Ayayay,” the other sighs in reply and adds in hope: “Why? Have you finished?” By now they can see the blown-over fences of the roadside houses, the tumbledown shed, the rusty water tank, when right beside them, a hoarse voice calls them from behind a high stack of weeds: “Wait! It’s me”” A twelve- to thirteen-year-old boy, completely chilled and soaked to the bone, wearing trousers rolled up to the knee rushes towards them, drenched, trembling, his eyes shining. Petrina is the first to recognize him. “So it’s you . . . ? What are you doing here, you little good-for-nothing!?” “I’ve been hiding here for hours..,” he announces with pride, and quickly looks down. His long hair hangs in knots over his spotty face, a cigarette glowing between his bent fingers. Irimiás takes patient stock of the boy who steals the odd look at him but immediately lowers his eyes again. “So what do you want?” Petrina quizzes him, shaking his head. The boy steals another glance at Irimiás. “You promised . . .” he starts, stutters and stops, “that . . . that if . . .” “Come on boy, spit it out!” Irimiás hassles him. “That if I told people that you were . . .” the boy finally blurts out kicking the ground all the while,” . . . dead, then you’d fix me up with Mrs. Schmidt . . .” Petrina pulls the boy’s ear and snaps at him: “What’s this? No sooner hatched and out of the egg but you already want to climb up ladies’ skirts, you little scoundrel! What next?!” The boy frees himself and shouts, his eyes flashing in anger. “I tell you what you should be pulling, you old goat. The skin off your dick!” If Irimiás did not intervene there’d be a fight. “Enough!” he bellows. “How did you know we were on the way?” The boy stands a careful distance from Petrina, rubbing his ear. “That’s my business. It doesn’t matter anyway . . . Everyone knows by now. The driver told them.” Petrina is cursing, looking up at the sky but Irimiás gestures for him to be quiet (“Use your brains! Leave him alone!”) and turns to the boy: “What driver?” “Kelemen. He lives by the Elek turning, that’s where he saw you.” “Kelemen? He’s become a bus driver?” “Yeah, since spring, on the cross-country route. But the bus isn’t in service at the moment so he has time to loaf around . . .” “OK,” says Irimiás and sets off. The boy hurries to keep pace with him. “I did what you asked me to do.. I hope you’ll keep your part of . . .” “I generally keep my promises,” Irimiás answers coolly. The boy follows him like a shadow; sometimes he catches up with him and squints up at his face then falls behind again. Petrina trails still further behind, a long way back, and though they can’t make out his voice they are aware he is continually cursing the ceaseless rain, the mud, the boy, and the world at large (“to hell with it all!”) “I still have the photograph!” says the boy some two hundred yards on. But Irimiás does not hear him or pretends not to have heard, his head raised high he is striding down the middle of the road, slicing the darkness with his hooked nose and sharp chin. The kid tries again: “Don’t you want to see the photograph?” Irimiás turns slowly to look at him. “What photograph?” Petrina has caught up with them. “Do you want to see?” Irimiás nods. “Stop beating about the bush, you little devil,” Petrina hurries him. “You won’t be cross?” “No. OK?” “You must let me hold it!” the boy adds and reaches into his shirt. In the photograph they are standing in front of a street vendor, Irimiás on the right, his hair combed and parted on the side, wearing a houndstooth-check jacket and a red tie, the crease on his trousers broken at his knee; Petrina is beside him in a pair of satin britches and an outsize undershirt, the sun shining through his jug-ears. Irimiás has screwed up his eyes and gives a mocking smile, Petrina is solemn and ceremonial; his eyes happen to be closed, his mouth slightly open. Someone’s hand intrudes into the picture on the left, the fingers holding a banknote, a fifty. Behind them a merry-go-round that has been tipped over, or is in process of being tipped over. “Well, would you look at that!” Petrina remarks in delight, “It’s really us, friend. I’ll be darned if it isn’t! Pass it over, let me get a better look at that old mug of mine.” The boy pushes his hand away. “Nah! Get lost! You think this is a free show I’m giving here! Get your filthy paws off,” and so saying he slips the photo back in its little plastic sleeve and back inside his shirt. “Aw, come on kid!” Petrina purrs, pleading. “Let’s have another look. I hardly had a chance to see anything.” “If you want to see more of it . . . then . . .” the boy hesitates, “then you’ll have to fix me up with the pub landlord’s wife. She has nice big tits too!” Petrina curses and sets off. (“What next, you brat!”) The boy slaps him on the back then rushes after Irimiás. Petrina fishes in the air after him for a while then he remembers the photograph, smiles and hums, and walks a little faster. They’re at the crossroads: from here it’s only half an hour. The boy looks at Irimiás adoringly leaping now to the left, now to the right of him . . . “Mari is screwing the pub landlord . . .” he loudly explains as he goes, taking the odd puff at his cigarette that has burned right down to his fingers by now.” . . . Mrs. Schmidt does it with the cripple, has for a long time, the headmaster does it to himself . . . Really repulsive . . . you can’t begin to imagine, ugh! . . . My sister has gone totally crazy, does nothing but listen and spy, she spies on everyone all the time, Ma beats her but it’s no use, nothing is of any use, it’s like people said, she will remain gaga all her life . . . believe it or not, the doctor just sits at home all the time, doing nothing, absolutely nothing! Just sits there all day, all night, he even sleeps in his chair, and his whole place smells, it’s like a rat’s nest, the light on day and night, not that it matters to him, he sits there smoking high-class cigarettes, you’ll see, it’s just like I told you. And, I almost forgot, today’s the day when Schmidt and Kráner are bringing the money home for the poultry, yes, that’s what they’ve all been doing since February, except Ma, because the filthy swine did not include her. The mill? Nobody goes there, the place is full of rooks, and my sisters because that’s where they go to whore, but what idiots, just imagine! Ma takes all their money and all they do is sit and weep! I wouldn’t let that happen, you can be sure of that. There in the bar? That doesn’t work any more. The landlord’s wife is so full of herself now, she’s swollen up like a cow’s ass, but luckily she has moved into the town house at last and will stay there till spring, because she said she wasn’t going to stay here up to her neck in mud, and, you have to laugh, the landlord has to go home once a month and when he comes back it’s like he’s had the shit kicked out of him, she lays into him so . . . In any case he has sold that great Pannón bike he had and bought some crap machine that he’s having to push round all the time, and everyone’s around, the whole estate when it starts up — because he is always delivering something to somebody — but then everyone has to push it, that’s if the engine starts at all . . . And, yes, he tells everyone that he has won some county race riding that wreck, you have to laugh! He’s with my little sister for now because we owe him for seed since last year . . .” By now the window of the bar is visible, glowing ahead of them, but there is no sound, not a single word to be heard, as if the place were deserted, not a soul . . . but now, someone is playing the harmonica . . . Irimiás scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale-blue and leans against the undulating
horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.