The Melancholy of Resistance (15 page)

once again to rise from the stool she leaned on him in a reassuringly maternal fashion as if putting a child’s mind at rest—‘the clear message that Mr Harrer conveyed
verbatim
to the director—or so one hopes—from the leading members of the community who are still present and have not so far retreated an inch, let me remind him once more, unambiguously indicated that his request for police support, whatever might have been promised him by the already ailing chief of police, was not in our power to grant.’ The mere fact, the woman emphasized, that, however brave, the number of constables at our disposal amounts to no more than forty-two, means that ordering them out to control a possibly agitated crowd is not a step that should be taken lightly, so he should think carefully before doing anything. And since, ‘as we know from Mr Harrer’, it did make him think carefully, she, Mrs Eszter, had firm faith in his decision to leave the town forthwith, and any doubt she might have had was dispelled by the knowledge that, according to rumour, he had been in such situations before, so would be aware what might happen if he failed to keep his word. ‘I saw that man and you did not,’ Harrer added, less in bad conscience, more in her defence, ‘and he is a man of such strong will, he just has to wave his cigar at his company and they follow him like sheep!’ The hostess responded by icily thanking him for his passionate support, requesting him at the same time to return to the subject in hand and search his memory for anything he might have forgotten that related to his meeting with the director. ‘Well,’ he answered quietly and leaned forward as if imparting a confidence, ‘you know how people talk, but it seems he has three eyes and weighs no more than twenty pounds.’ ‘Thank you,’ she barked at him, ‘but let me put the question another way so you should understand it. Did the director say anything else to you beside that which you have told us already?’ ‘Well … no,’ the messenger closed his eyes, alarmed at the turn of events, neurotically flicking ash into the open tin. ‘In that case,’ the woman stated after a moment’s hesitation, ‘this is what I recommend. You, Mr Harrer, should go out into the square and come back immediately to report to us if the circus has started moving. We, your worship, will naturally remain here. As for you, János, I have a personal request …’ and at this point, after a good quarter of an hour, she let go of Valuska’s shoulder only to grab his arm, since he, frightened by Harrer, the mayor, the chief of police and Mrs Eszter too, would immediately have made a dash for the door. If he thought—and she gave him an encouraging look and leaned close to him in intimate fashion—that he had got over his state of shock, there was something important he could do that she, Mrs Eszter, being unable to leave her post, could not, unfortunately, however much she desired to do so, attend to. The chief, said she, indicating the bed that reeked of alcohol, whose sad condition was not entirely due, as it might seem, ‘to the quantity of drink he had consumed’ but to exhaustion caused by the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, was, on this extraordinary day, prevented from carrying out ‘his paternal duties’. What she was trying to say, Mrs Eszter elaborated, was that there was no one at home to look after his two children at this difficult time, and since someone had to feed them and, ‘since it was almost seven o’clock, and they were probably frightened’, reassure them and put them to bed, she, Mrs Eszter, immediately thought of Valuska. It was only a little thing, she crooned gently in his ear, but, she added humorously, ‘we will not forget even such trifles’, and she would be extremely grateful if he would agree—seeing how busy she herself was—to take the task on. Valuska would certainly have agreed, if only because he wanted to get away from her, and no doubt he would have answered with a firm yes, but he had no opportunity to do so for just at that moment the window-pane was shaken by a noise that sounded very much like a powerful explosion, and since there was no doubt as to where it came from—for even before the sound had faded everyone in the room knew something had happened in the market square to make the crowd cry out like that, they all froze and waited in perfect silence for it to die away—or for it to be repeated. ‘They’re going!’ Harrer broke the silence that had set in after the boom, but remained stock still, precisely where he was. ‘They’re staying!’ the mayor sobbed, then having admitted that he deeply regretted leaving his home since he didn’t actually know how he would get back, the route through back gardens probably being out of the question now, he suddenly made for the bed, shook the sleeper’s legs and shouted at him, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ The chief, who could hardly be said to have added to the atmosphere of tension in the committee’s negotiations through any over-excitement on his part, lost none of his exemplary calm despite this merciless tugging, but slowly sat up, propped his elbows on the cushion, peered round through the slits of his inflamed eyes, then—stressing his words in a somewhat peculiar manner—answered, all right, but he wouldn’t do a damned thing until reinforcements arrived from the county, then collapsed back into the bed so as to re-establish the lost thread of his dreams—a thread that had been incomprehensibly cut and for no good reason—which offered the only chance of recovery, as quickly as possible. Only Mrs Eszter remained silent. She fixed her stern gaze on the ceiling and waited. Then slowly, deliberately, she met each pair of eyes, a barely suppressed smile of excitement flickering round her thin lips, and spoke. ‘Gentlemen, this is the moment of truth. I believe we are about to resolve the situation!’ Once again Harrer hastened to agree, but the mayor appeared to harbour one or two doubts on the subject, fidgeting with his tie, his head rocking from side to side. Valuska alone seemed unaffected by the ceremoniousness of her announcement, for his hand was already on the doorknob and, when given the sign for leaving, with the heavily breathing Harrer about to follow closely on his heels, he called back from the door in a broken voice (‘… But … Mr Eszter?’), and left with such a disappointed expression on his face you’d have thought the world had collapsed about him; indeed, his every movement suggested that he was going only because he could no longer bear to stay, it being pitifully plain that he had no idea where he was to go to. His world had indeed collapsed, since the hopes he had so painfully, so desperately reposed in Mrs Eszter and the committee had been deeply disappointed: had they not committed the tragic mistake of confusing the order of the two reports (Mrs Eszter’s initial sentence, ‘Well, that’s over,’ was still ringing in his head) and gone on to assume that Harrer’s came after his, and, placing no trust in him, simply failed to hear his words at all and, what was more, owing to his agitated state taken not the blindest bit of notice of him to the extent that Mrs Eszter had actually shut him up, and didn’t this mean that he had lost any chance of relying on them to help him!? Under the circumstances it hadn’t taken him long to realize—Mrs Eszter having wholly devoted herself to the task of calming the fully justified fears of the mayor—that it was pointless trying to influence the headlong thought-processes of his resolute hostess, he had to cope with the knowledge of the terrible sequence of events in the market square all by himself. All by himself, and since he understood that no one there had been interested in what might happen to his friend in Wenckheim Avenue, he also had to deal with Mr Eszter all by himself, and as if precisely because of this, a great silence had fallen on the room as it had on the square before; that is to say he saw that people were talking around him but as for hearing it, he had heard nothing, and would not have wanted to hear anything anyway: all he had wanted was the strong hand lifted from his shoulder at last, to be able to leave this place he had come to in vain, to feel the houses rushing past him so he could forget his sense of helplessness at knowing that he couldn’t simply yield to the irresistible force of the plan he had overheard at the circus door yet had no idea what to do about it. There was indeed nothing for it but to forget this sense of helplessness in ‘the feeling of houses rushing past him’, but he stopped for a moment at the gate to beg Mr Harrer not to go there (but Harrer, seeming to be deaf, answered by raptly repeating, ‘What a woman! What a woman!’ and was already running off in the direction of Kossuth Square), then adjusted the strap of his bag and, turning his back on the market square and his fast retreating landlord, set off in the opposite direction down the narrow pavement. He set off and houses and garden fences began to lurch past him but he felt rather than saw their fevered rushing for his eyes were incapable of seeing anything, not even the square blocks of paving at his feet; trees swept by him, their trunks at a slant, their bare branches trembling with anticipation in the murderous cold, lampposts leapt out of his way: everything was galloping, everything was in flight wherever he went, but all in vain, since neither the houses, nor the pavement slabs, nor the lampposts, nor the trees with their admonitory branches wanted to come to a stop, far from it, the more he wanted to force them back behind him the more he felt that they kept appearing again and again and somehow managed to get in front of him so that really he hadn’t passed a single one. First the hospital, then the skating rink, later the marble fountain on Erkel Square flashed before him, but in the chaos of images rattling past his inner eye he couldn’t decide, however hard he tried, whether he was where he seemed to be or had utterly failed to escape the immediate precincts of Mrs Eszter’s home, then, despite all this—as if accidentally realizing his desire to put a considerable distance between himself and The Prince’s domain in Kossuth Square and to enter his own as quickly as possible—he found himself where Eighteen Forty-Eight Avenue crossed the main road out of town and woke from the numbing labyrinth he had been trying to escape to the hazy consciousness that he was standing at the entrance to Mrs Plauf’s block, pressing the buzzer to her flat. ‘Mama, it’s only me …’ he bellowed into the set once he had rung several times and understood from the crackling of the speaker that his call had been noted but answered with silence. ‘Mama, it’s me, and I only want to tell …’ ‘What are you doing on the streets at this time?!’ the intercom barked at him, so loud and sudden he lost track of what he was saying. ‘I said, what are you doing on the streets at this time!?’ ‘Terrible things are happening, Mama …’ he tried to explain, leaning closer to the microphone—’… and I want to …’ Terrible things?’ the voice snapped back at him. ‘And you admit you know about it?! And despite that you insist on wandering about the streets at night?! Tell me, immediately, what have you been up to this time?! Do you want to kill your mother?! Haven’t you done enough to ruin me yet?!’ ‘Mama, Mama, just listen to me … for a moment …’ Valuska stammered into the intercom; ‘really … I mean you no harm … I would just like to have told you to … to … to lock your doors and … and let no one in, because …’ ‘You’ve been drinking!!!!’ the voice bellowed back, quite beside itself. ‘You’ve been drinking again, despite promising me you would never touch another drop! You keep drinking, though you have your little flat, but that’s not good enough for you, oh no, you must go roving round the streets! Very well, dear boy,’ the set hissed, ‘things will have to change round here! If you don’t go home at once you will never set foot in here again! You understand?!’ ‘Yes, Mama …’ ‘Then listen, listen very hard! If I hear, do you understand, if I once hear that you are hanging about in the streets and getting into trouble I’ll come down and find you and drag you by your hair if need be to the station … and I’ll have you locked up … you know where! I won’t put up with it, you understand, I won’t be disgraced by you again!!’ ‘No, certainly not, Mama … I’m going… . ’And he was going, just as he told the intercom he would, but somehow he couldn’t resign himself to having failed to convey the seriousness of the situation, so he stood there for a while lost in thought, resolving to turn round and try again, till it dawned on him that if he was incapable of recounting his experiences even to Mrs Eszter, there was practically no chance of his doing so to his mother. He couldn’t explain because she wouldn’t believe a word of what he said about The Prince and the factotum and she would only lose her temper with him again, not wholly unjustifiably, Valuska felt, for you couldn’t say she was precisely irritable, and the truth was that unless he had heard all that he had heard with his own ears, he would have been the first to cast doubt on the story or on the existence of anything so unlikely. Nevertheless—Valuska meandered down the deserted street—The Prince did exist, and that made it impossible to take a rational view of anything, since he required neither the quack mysticism of announcing himself as a celestial messenger, nor the operation of some inhuman desire to work harm in order to alter the shape of the world around him: his mere existence was enough to force it to abandon its habit of judging things by its own standards and encourage it to believe that there were principles at work here that negated its desire to label him as an unequivocal fraud. At the same time, the phenomenon of his mere existence—Valuska continued meandering—included elements both of quack mysticism and inhuman desire, as well as fraud, fury and harm, elements he did not bother to mask in the course of his haughty encounter with the director; the elements did not, however, constitute the person, but were simply the likely consequences of his clearly extraordinary and terrifying being, the full hidden significance and scope of which—apart from what could be concluded from a single stray remark—naturally lay beyond Valuska’s comprehension. He stumbled down one street after another, the words of The Prince buzzing round his head, and while the director’s characterization of The Prince’s activities as a wicked imposition remained persuasive, he was quite certain that this undoubtedly most mysterious member of the troupe was not merely a confidence trickster intent on enjoying the power reposed in him by an all too gullible public. Unlike the director, he
found something profoundly terrifying in The Prince’s words, the pitiless and wholly alien clangour of them rendered all the more fearsome by the fact that they had been interpreted in piecemeal fashion by an intermediary whose grasp of Hungarian was less than perfect; he felt that this added to their profundity and, indeed, inevitability, or rather that the words implied a notion of something so utterly free and unfettered that any attempt to bind it into the disciplines of systematic thought would be vain. Vain, because The Prince seemed to emerge out of shadows of things where the conventions of the tangible world no longer applied, a place compounded of impossibility and incomprehensibility from which he radiated a magnetism so powerful that, even allowing for the regard in which he was held by those he considered ‘his own’, his status far exceeded that of a freak in any circus side-show. It was a pointless and hopeless task therefore—the houses, trees, paving slabs and lampposts began to slow down at this point—to attempt to understand something so extraordinary, but simply to give in—and he remembered the tense expressions on the faces in the market square—and allow the town to be sacked at a single word of dread command, when the sacking would include Mr Eszter’s residence (it was he himself who had unwittingly drawn their attention to it!) while Mr Eszter remained unsuspecting and defenceless; to abandon oneself to this notion and stand idly by as it happened—as everything around him slowed and came to a stop—was, he felt, impossible. He seemed to hear the screeching bird-like noises in his head again and this brought on a fresh wave of fear, so he stood still in it, knowing he could do no more than talk to people and warn them: ‘Lock your doors and stay put.’ He would tell everyone, he decided, from Mr Eszter to the brotherhood of man at the Peafeffer, from the dispersing employees of the railway company to the night porter, everyone—even the chief of police’s little brood should hear about it, he thought suddenly, and when on looking round he realized that he was but a block away from them, he made up his mind to start with the children who had in any case been entrusted to his care, then his employer, and extend his warning to the rest once he had done that. The block where the chief lived wore an anonymous look, as if pretending to be unaware of its important lodger hidden away on the first floor: the stucco had practically disappeared off the walls, a good length of drainpipe was missing further up, and as for the gate, it seemed to have solved the issue of whether it should stay open or shut by dispensing with its handle. The building could be approached only by negotiating heaps of rubbish brought out by the residents, while the path leading to the entrance from the pavement was obstructed by a stretch of detached iron railing someone happened to have left precisely in front of the doorway. Nor did the state of affairs inside offer a vast improvement on the exterior, for as soon as Valuska entered the stairwell he was hit by such a tremendous draught that his peaked cap was blown clean off his head as if by way of alerting him to the fact that nature was lord and master here. He set off up the concrete steps but the draught, instead of moderating, turned even more unpredictable: one moment it seemed to drop almost completely, the next it would assault him with renewed violence and vigour, so much so that he had to remove his cap and grip it in his hand while concentrating on breathing through his nose, and when he finally reached the right floor and pressed the bell he awaited the opening of the door as anxiously as someone who had just weathered a real hurricane. Unfortunately no one did open the door and the clamour of the bell died away together with the sound of frightened footsteps drumming in response to it, so he pressed it again, and once more, and was about to leap to the conclusion that there was someone in difficulty inside when he heard the key turning in the lock, but then the sound of drumming footsteps began once more, followed, again, by silence … It was warm in the apartment, hot even, and the walls with their rolled floral patterns blossomed in damp patches rising above the skirting board; he negotiated the coats, newspapers and shoes that were strewn across the narrow hall in the manner of an obstacle race, glanced into the kitchen and, still seeking an explanation for the curious manner of his reception, arrived in the sitting room, whereupon his frozen body was gripped by such a dreadful shivering he was quite unable to speak. He pulled at the strap of his bag across his shoulder, unbuttoned his coat and tried to stop himself trembling by energetically rubbing his numb limbs together. Suddenly he had the acute feeling that someone was standing behind him. He turned round, frightened, and indeed, he was not mistaken: there in the doorway of the sitting room stood the two children staring at him wordlessly, unmoving.’ ‘Oh,’ cried Valuska, ‘you quite frightened me!’ ‘We thought it was dad coming home… .’ they replied and continued staring. ‘And do you always hide when your dad comes home?’ The boys made no answer but remained still, gazing solemnly at him. One looked about six, the other about eight years old; the younger boy was blond, the elder had brown hair, but both had inherited the chief’s eyes. Their clothes on the other hand had probably been passed on to them by the neighbour’s eldest, for both shirt and trousers, but chiefly the latter, looked as though they had seen all too many washing days and had so far faded that practically all the colour had gone out of them. ‘I ought to tell you,’ Valuska explained in a somewhat confused manner, feeling that they were not only looking at him but nervously weighing him up, ‘that your dad will be back late and that he asked me to … to put you to bed … Actually I have to go straight away, but it’s very important,’ he shivered again, ‘that you should lock the door after me, and whoever rings don’t let them in … In other words,’ he added in even greater confusion since the children made no attempt to move, ‘you should go to bed now.’ He began doing up his coat and cleared his throat awkwardly, not knowing what to do with them, and to stop them staring he tried smiling at them at which the younger relaxed a little, edged closer to him and asked him, ‘What’s in your bag?’ The question came as such a surprise to Valuska that he opened the bag, peered into it, then got down on his haunches and showed it to the children. ‘Newspapers, that’s all … I deliver them.’ ‘He’s a postman!’ the elder brother announced from the threshold with the annoyance and disdain befitting his seniority. “Course he’s not a postman!’ the other retorted. ‘Dad says he’s an idiot.’ He turned to the visitor once more and suspiciously took stock of him. ‘Are you really … an idiot?’ ‘No, I’m not,’ Valuska shook his head and stood up. ‘I’m not an idiot as you can see by looking at me.’ ‘Pity,’ the little one’s lip curled in disappointment. ‘I want to be an idiot and tell the king good and proper that his country is rubbish.’ ‘Don’t be stupid!’ The older one pulled a hideous face behind him and Valuska tried to gain his sympathy too by asking, ‘Why? And what would you like to be?’ ‘Me? I want to be a good cop,’ the boy answered with pride, but with some diffidence as if unwilling to reveal the full extent of his plans to a stranger. ‘And put everyone in jail,’ he folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the doorpost, ‘all the drunkards and all the idiots.’ ‘The drunkards, yes,’ ‘the little one agreed, then shouting, ‘Death to the drunkards!’ began jumping and cavorting round the room. Valuska felt he ought to say something now so that having gained their confidence they might obey him and go to bed, but nothing worthwhile occurred to him and he closed his bag, stepped over to the window and looked out on the dark street; then, suddenly remembering that he should be on his way to Mr Eszter, he lost patience. ‘I’m afraid,’ he raised his cap with trembling hands and ran his fingers through his hair, ‘I’ve got to go.’ ‘I’ve already got my uniform,’ announced the older boy by way of response and, seeing that Valuska was ready to depart and had set off in the direction of the hall, he added, ‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you!’ ‘Me too! Me too!’ The younger one jumped up and down and, making car noises, steered his way in hot pursuit of his brother. There was no escape since Valuska had taken only a step or two down the hall before a door opened and slammed behind him and there they stood, to attention, with enigmatic looks on their faces. Both were wearing genuine police tunics: the smaller one’s scraped along the ground, but the one on the older boy reached only down to his knee; even though they looked comical in them—you could have got three of them into either of the jackets—the jackets were so well made, the proportions were so exact, it was clear they had only to grow into them. ‘I say … really …’ Valuska muttered approvingly and would have made his way outside but the little one produced a box from behind his back, squinted up at him and simply said, ‘Here, look!’ So Valuska was forced to admire a sharpened stick which, he was informed, ‘was to poke the enemy’s eyes out’, after which he had to admit that the Swedish razor was probably best fitted ‘to cut the enemy’s throat’ and, lastly, conceded that the splinters of ground glass in the stoppered jar would certainly be effective enough ‘to dispose of anyone’ if smuggled into their drink. ‘That’s nothing … ! I gave him all those things, they’re for kids in infant school … !’ the older one commented disparagingly from the kitchen doorway. ‘But if you want to see something really interesting, look here!’ And so saying he drew a real revolver from his pocket. He laid it in his palm then slowly closed his fingers about it so that Valuska, retreating instinctively, could hardly get his words out. ‘But, well … how did you come by this … ?! “That’s not important now!’ The boy shrugged and tried to spin the gun on his index finger, without success, for the sheer momentum sent it clattering to the floor. ‘I’d really like you to give that to me… .’ Valuska said, making a frightened grab for it, but the boy was faster, snatched the revolver up and pointed it directly at him. ‘That’s a very dangerous thing …’ Valuska explained, holding his hands out before him. ‘You shouldn’t play with it …’ and then, since the gun didn’t move and because both of them were staring at him exactly as they had when he first arrived in the sitting room, he began to back away mechanically until he reached the front door. ‘Fine,’ he said, pressing the handle behind him. ‘I am really scared. But … now …’the door opened, ‘do put it back where it belongs or your dad … will be cross with you … Go to bed now, quietly …’he slipped through, ‘be good and go to sleep’; at last he could carefully close the door on them and mutter, more to himself than anyone else, ‘… and lock up everything … don’t let anyone in …’ He heard the laughter inside, he heard the key turn in the door, then, clutching his official peaked cap, made his way down the stairs through the violent gusts that broke about him. Two pairs of staring eyes were fixed on him nor could he free himself from their piercing, penetrating rays; having trembled in the heat of that chaotic room, now that he had left the building he began to shake with cold. He shook with cold in the chill that penetrated him to the bone, but he was equally chilled by a thought he had hitherto believed unthinkable: the thought that two children and such ruthless icy passion could be part of the same thought. He transferred the bag from one shoulder to the other, buttoned his coat up and, feeling that he could not bear the thought otherwise, tried not to think of the tightly gripped pistol, the mocking laughter behind the closed door, but to concentrate on getting to the house in Wenckheim Avenue as quickly as possible. He tried not to think of it, but the two boys in their enormous police tunics seemed to be dancing before his eyes and he suddenly felt a tweak of conscience that he had left them there with a possibly loaded weapon and wondered if he should turn back, a temptation he abandoned, but abandoned absolutely only once he had turned from Árpád Street into the main boulevard and noticed that not too far away, somewhere in the direction of the city centre, just above the rooftops, a reddish glow was rising. A terrifying thought struck him: ‘They’ve started burning things’—and suddenly all his feelings of guilt and doubt disappeared, he clutched his bag, so it shouldn’t keep slapping at his side, and started running through the array of stray cats, towards Mr Eszter’s house. He ran and, having arrived, stood in the doorway, his arms outstretched, then—having realized in his one remaining moment of lucidity that he would succeed only in frightening his unsuspecting master by breaking in on him—resolved on remaining there, determined to repel any likely intruders. How he would do this he had no idea, and for a good while he could explain his own fear of unexpected assault only in terms of the panic brought on by the mere possibility of incendiary attacks (for he had no way of being sure that that was what he had seen). Meanwhile the sky continued red and Valuska paced up and down before the gate, ready to spring into action, taking now four steps to the right, now four to the left, and no more than four because by the fifth he would have been aware that the other side had been left unguarded, lost in the thickening darkness. Things happened very quickly after that, in fact in a single moment. Suddenly he heard footsteps, the sound of a hundred boot-clad feet approaching, tired, exhausted feet scraping the ground. A group of men stood before him and slowly encircled him. He saw their hands, their stumpy fingers, and would have liked to say something. But a voice behind them croaked, ‘Wait!’ and, without seeing his face, he recognized the grey broadcloth overcoat and knew immediately that the figure walking up to him through the open ring of men couldn’t be anyone else but the new friend he had made in the market square. ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re coming with us,’ the man whispered in his ear and put his arm about his shoulders. And Valuska couldn’t say anything, but set off with them; nor did the other speak but leaned across him, using his free hand to