Satantango (7 page)

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glass then immediately refilled it to the same level. He removed his spectacles and closed his eyes. He saw a vague, barely distinguishable figure, a tall awkward man with a large body dashing into the darkness: only later did he notice that the road, that “crooked road littered with many obstacles” came to a sudden end. He did not wait for the figure to fall down the chasm but opened his eyes in fear. Suddenly it was as if a bell were tolling, though only for a moment, then silence. A bell? And quite close, too! . . . Or so it seemed for a moment. Very close. He surveyed the estate with an icy expression. He saw a blurred face in the Schmidts’ window and quickly recognized Futaki’s creased features: he looked scared, leaning out of the open window, searching intently for something above the houses. What did he want? The doctor pulled a notebook marked FUTAKI from among the pile of writings at the end of the able and found the relevant page. “Futaki is frightened of something. He was looking out of the window at dawn with a startled expression. Futaki fears death.” He threw back his
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and quickly refilled the glass. He lit a cigarette and remarked aloud: “You’ll all cheese it soon. You too are going to cheese it, Futaki. Don’t get so worked up.” After a few moments the rain began to fall. Soon enough it was pouring down, quickly filling the shallower ditches; tiny streams were already zigzagging in every direction like liquid lightning. The doctor watched all this, deeply absorbed, then set to make a rough sketch of the scene in his notebook, carefully and conscientiously marking the smallest puddle, the direction of the current and, having finished, noting the time underneath. The room slowly brightened: the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling threw a cold light over it. The doctor forced himself up from the chair, pushed away the blanket and turned the light off before settling back again. He took a can of fish and some cheese from the cardboard box at the left hand side of the chair. The cheese had grown moldy here and there and the doctor took some time examining it before throwing it into the litter basket by the door. He opened the can and slowly and methodically chewed his way through mouthfuls before swallowing them. Then he threw back another glass of
pálinka.
He was no longer cold but kept the blankets round him for a while. He laid his book in his lap then suddenly filled up his glass.
It is interesting to note at the end of the Ponticum era, when the great lowland sea had mostly subsided leaving a large shallow lake roughly the size of the Balaton, how much destruction was caused by the combined forces of the wind and water in the beating of the waves.
What is this supposed to be, prophecy or geological history? the doctor fumed. He turned the page.
At the same time the entire area of the Lowlands begins to rise and so the waters of lesser lakes start to drain off to more distant territories too. Without the epirogenetic elevation of this central Tisian mass we could not begin to explain the rapid disappearance of the Levantine lakes. In the Pleistocene era, after the disappearance of the various standing waters, only minor lakes, marshes and bogs remained as signs of the lost inland sea . . .
The text, in Dr. Benda’s local edition, did not sound at all convincing, the evidence insufficient, the crude logic of the argument not worth taking seriously, or so he felt without having any knowledge of the subject, uncertain even of the technical terms employed; nevertheless, as he read, the history of the earth that had seemed so solid, so fixed under and around him, came alive, though the unknown author’s awkward, unpolished style — the book being written now in the present and now in the past tense — confused him, so he couldn’t be sure whether he was reading a work of prophecy regarding the earth’s condition after the demise of humanity or a proper work of geological history based on the planet on which he actually lived. His imagination was bewitched almost to the point of paralysis by the notion that this estate with its rich, generous soil was, only a few million years ago, covered by the sea . . . that it had alternated between sea and dry land, and suddenly — even as he conscientiously noted down the stocky, swaying figure of Schmidt in his soggy quilted jacket and boots heavy with mud appearing on the path from Szikes, hurrying as if he feared being spotted, sliding in through the back door of his house — he was lost in successive waves of time, coolly aware of the minimal speck of his own being, seeing himself as the defenseless, helpless victim of the earth’s crust, the brittle arc of his life between birth and death caught up in the dumb struggle between surging seas and rising hills, and it was as if he could already feel the gentle tremor beneath the chair supporting his bloated body, a tremor that might be the harbinger of seas about to break in on him, a pointless warning to flee before its all encompassing power made escape impossible, and he could see himself running, part of a desperate, terrified stampede comprising stags, bears, rabbits, deer, rats, insects and reptiles, dogs and men, just so many futile, meaningless lives in the common, incomprehensible devastation, while above them flapped clouds of birds, dropping in exhaustion, offering the only possible hope. For a few minutes he was contemplating a vague plan, thinking it might be better to abandon his earlier experiments and thus make available the energy required “to liberate himself from desire,” to gradually wean himself off food, alcohol and cigarettes, to opt for silence rather than the constant struggle of naming things and so, after a few months, or perhaps just one or two weeks, he might reach a condition entirely without waste and instead of leaving a trail behind him to dissolve in the terminal silence that was in any case urgently calling to him . . . but within a few moments all this seemed quite ridiculous, and maybe it was, after all, little more than fear or the sense of his own dignity that made him feel vulnerable, so he downed the prepared
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then filled his glass again because an empty glass always made him feel a little nervous. Then he lit another cigarette and set to making more notes. “Futaki slips carefully through the door. He waits outside a short time. Then he knocks and shouts something. He hurries back in. The Schmidts are still inside. The headmaster has gone out through the back carrying his trashcan. Mrs. Kráner sneaks around her gate, watching. I’m tired, I should sleep. What day is it?” He pushed his glasses up on his brow, put down his pencil and rubbed the red mark on the bridge of his nose. He could only see vague patches in the cataract of rain outside, the odd clear-then-blurred top of some tree when, somewhere under the constant thunder, he heard the agonized howling of dogs in the distance. “As if they were being tortured.” He saw dogs hanging by their feet in the lee of some obscure hut or shack, their noses being roasted by a depraved adolescent wielding matches: he paid close attention and made further notes. “It seems to be stopping . . . no, it has started again.” For minutes on end he could not tell whether he was really hearing howls of pain, or whether it was simply that his years of long, exhausting work had rendered him incapable of distinguishing between the general noise and ancient prehistoric screams that were somehow preserved in time (“The evidence of suffering does not disappear without trace,” he hopefully remarked) and now were being raised by the rain, like dust. Then, suddenly, he heard other noises: whimpers, wails and a stifled human sobbing, which — like the houses and trees that were solidifying into blotches — would sometimes rise clear of, or sink back into, the monotonous hum of the rain. “Cosmic
wirtschaft,
” he wrote in his notebook. “My hearing is going.” He looked out of the window, drained his glass, but this time forgot immediately to refill it. A great wave of heat passed through him, his brow and thick neck covered in sweat; he felt mildly dizzy and there was a pain, a kind of tightening about his heart. He did not find this at all surprising for ever since yesterday night, when he was woken from a brief, restless two hours of dreamless sleep by a nearby cry, he had been continuously drinking (the “capacious demijohn” at his right had only enough
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left for one more day), and furthermore, he had hardly eaten anything. He got up to relieve himself but, surveying the pile of rubbish towering before the door, he thought better of it. “Later. It’ll wait,” he said aloud but did not sit back down and took a few steps close to the table toward the far wall in case movement might help “the painful tightening.” The sweat was running in streams from his armpits down his fat flanks: he felt weak. The blanket slipped from his shoulders as he went but he lacked the strength to readjust it. He sat back in the armchair, filled another glass, thinking that might help, and he was right, a few minutes later he could breathe more easily and was sweating less. The rain beating at the glass made it more difficult to see anything so he decided to suspend his surveillance for a little while, knowing that he would not miss anything since he was attentive to “the slightest noise, the slightest rustle” and would notice it immediately, even those delicate noises that emanated from within, from his heart or his stomach. Soon he had fallen into an anxious sleep. The empty glass he had been holding in his hand slipped to the floor without breaking, his head slumped forward, saliva trickled from the side of his mouth. Everything seemed to have been waiting for just this moment. The place suddenly went dark as if someone had stood in front of the window: the colors of the ceiling, the door, the curtain, the window and the floor all deepened, the tuft of hair that formed the doctor’s forelock began to grow more rapidly as did the nails on his short, puffy fingers; the table and the chair both gave a creak and even the house sank a little deeper into the soil as part of the insidious revolt. The weeds at the foot of the wall at the back of the house began to spurt, the creased notebooks scattered here and there attempted to smooth themselves out with one or two sharp movements, the rafters in the roof groaned, the emboldened rats ran down the hall with a greater freedom. He woke dizzy, with a bad taste in his mouth. He didn’t know and could only guess at the time having forgotten to wind his waterproof, shock-proof, frost-proof, highly reliable “Rocket” wristwatch — and the small hand had just passed the eleven on the dial. The shirt he was wearing was wet through with sweat and made him feel cold, as though he was perishing, and his headache — though he couldn’t be sure of this — seemed to be concentrated at the back of his neck. He filled his glass and was surprised to note that he had misjudged the situation: there was not enough
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for a day, only for a couple of hours at the most. “I shall have to go into town,” he thought nervously. “I can refill the demijohn at Mopsz’s. But the damn bus is out of service! If only it would stop raining I could go on foot.” He looked out of the window and was annoyed to find that the rain had washed out the road. What was more, if the old road could not be used, then he could not set out on the metalled way because it might be tomorrow morning before he got there. He decided to eat something and postpone the decision. He opened another can and, leaning forward, began to spoon it into his mouth. He had just finished and was preparing to make new notes comparing the current width of the flooded ditches and traffic with their conditions at dawn, remarking on the differences, when he heard a noise at the entrance door. Somebody was fiddling with a key in the lock. The doctor put his notes away and leaned back in his chair, ill-tempered. “Hello, doctor,” said Mrs. Kráner, stopping on the threshold. “It’s only me.” She knew she had to wait and, sure enough, the doctor did not miss the opportunity to examine her face in the usual ruthless, slow, detailed manner. Mrs. Kráner bore this humbly without in the least understanding the procedure (“Let him gaze his fill, let him conduct his examination, if he enjoys it so much!” she used to say at home to her husband), then stepped forward as the doctor beckoned her in. “I’ve only come, cause, as you can see, we’ve got heavy rain, and, as I said to my husband at lunchtime, this will take time to clear, and then it’ll be snow next.” The doctor did not answer but looked sullenly in front of him. “I talked it over with my husband and we thought that since I can’t go anyway, as there is no bus till the spring, we should speak to the pub landlord because there’s a car there, and then we could bring a lot of things in one trip, enough even for two or three weeks, said my husband. Then, in the spring, we’ll think about what to do after that.” The doctor was breathing heavily. “So does that mean you can no longer do the job?” It seemed Mrs. Kráner was prepared for this question. “Of course not, I mean why wouldn’t I do it, you know me doctor, there’s been no problem ever, but as you can see for yourself, sir, there is no bus and when it’s raining like this, as the doctor knows, said my husband, he’ll understand, cause how am I going to get into town on foot, and it would be better for you too, sir, if Mopsz drove here, you could get so much more . . .” “Fine, Mrs. Krámer, you may go.” The woman turned towards the door. “Then you will talk to him, I mean the landlo — “ “I’ll speak to whomsoever I want to speak to,” the doctor thundered. Mrs. Kráner left but she had barely taken a few steps down the corridor when she quickly turned back. “Oh look, I forgot. The keys.” “What about the keys?” “Where should I put them?” “Put them anywhere you like.” Mrs. Kráner’s house was near the doctor’s so he could observe her for only a short time as she made her slow, painful way back over the cloying mud. He searched among his clutch of papers, found the notebook headed MRS. KRÁNER and jotted down: “K resigned. She can’t do it any more. I should ask the landlord. She had no problem walking in the rain last spring. She is up to no good. She was confused but not to be swerved from her purpose. She’s cooking something up. But what the devil is it?” In the course of the afternoon he read the rest of the notes he had made on her but it didn’t help: it might be that his suspicions were unfounded and all that was happening was that the woman has spent the whole day dreaming at home and now she was getting things confused . . . The doctor knew Mrs. Kráner’s kitchen of old, well remembered that narrow constantly overheated cubby-hole and knew that that stuffy, ill-smelling nook was a breeding ground for feeble, childish plans; that stupid, perfectly ridiculous desires sometimes caught her unaware there, drifting before her like steam from a saucepan. Clearly, that’s what must have happened now: steam had raised the lid of the pan. Then, as so many times before, would come the moment of bitter realization and Mrs. Kráner would rush around at breakneck speed to remedy that which she had ruined the previous day. The noise of the rain seemed to have grown a little fainter but then it pelted down again. Mrs. Kráner would be proved right: it really was the first great rain of the season. The doctor thought back to last year’s autumn and to those of earlier years and knew that this was how it would have to be; that, apart from a brief break of sunshine that lasted a few hours, or at most a day or two, it would pour down steadily, without a pause, right until the first frosts so that the roads would become impassable and they would be shut off from the outside world, from town and from the railways; that the constant rain would turn the soil into one enormous sea of mud, and the animals would vanish into woods the other side of the Szikes, into the narrow park of the Hochmeiss estate or into the overgrown park of Weinkheim Manor because the mud would kill off all forms of life, rot the vegetation and there would be nothing left, just the ankle-deep cart-tracks of the end of summer that had filled up with water up your boot tops, and these pools and puddles of water, as well as the nearby canal, would be covered over with frogspawn and reeds and tangled weeds that in the evening or early twilight, when the moon’s dead light reflected off them, would glitter all over the body of the land like a galaxy of tiny silvery blind eyes gazing up at the sky. Mrs. Halics passed before the window and crossed opposite him to the far side to rattle the window at Schmidt’s. A few minutes earlier he seemed to have heard snatches of conversation which led him to think that there must be some trouble with Halics again and that the lanky Mrs. Halics must be calling on Mrs. Schmidt for help. “Clearly, Halics must be drunk again. The woman is animatedly explaining something to Mrs. Schmidt who appears to be looking at her in astonishment or fear. I can’t see too well. The headmaster has appeared now, chasing the cat. Then he sets off toward the cultural center with a projector under his arm. The others are drifting that way too now, yes: there’s going to be film show.” He threw back another glass of