The Rebels (13 page)

“I’m not taken by that Ernõ either,” she suddenly announced. “He’s after something, my child, I’m sure of it. His father is quite crazy too. Someone must have hammered one of his own hobnails through his head. And I don’t like the way Lajos laughs. One should forgive him because he has suffered much, but whenever he grins at me for no reason I feel cold shivers run up my spine. Be careful, my sweet one and only. Think of your father. Your father could get to the bottom of anything and knew the reason for everything. He’d be able to look into the eyes of your friend Zakarka and quickly discover what he was up to. He’d know why young Prockauer has taken to flashing smiles at people. I wouldn’t trust Béla either. His face is lined as if he spent his nights up to God knows what, it’s as yellow as parchment and full of spots. They’re whited sepulchers, all of them, darling. Mark my words. And by the way, where is your father’s violin? I’ve been looking for it for days. When he returns it’s the first thing he’ll want to find.”

Ábel didn’t know. He couldn’t tell his aunt that the violin had for weeks been resting in their bolt-hole at The Peculiar and that Béla, who knew not a note of music but could imitate the virtuosos he had never seen to perfection, would entertain them with silent performances on it. He had to pay a forfeit every time he dared touch the strings with the bow.

Now there’s your friend, Tibor, his aunt continued. Do you know what I like about him? I like the way he looks at me. Have you noticed how he blushes sometimes? When I address him he raises his eyes and blushes. And it’s a good sign when a boy blushes. And he has manners too. His father gave him a strict upbringing.

She would have been prepared to share him, but couldn’t bear to admit to herself that there was nothing left to share. Ábel, who had once been hers, was lost to her. The house was big and empty now. The town too seemed emptier without the men. Life no longer had a single comprehensive meaning for her. Ábel lowered his eyes whenever she spoke to him. She had noticed how often, reluctantly, possibly out of pity, he lied to her. He lied to her as if he didn’t want the truth to hurt her. And since she dared not investigate the lies she hastened to accept what the boy said.

The scent of Ábel’s childhood slowly faded from the rooms. Both of them went round trying to hang on to the lingering trail of it, searching for the life that had gone, the intimacy of the looks they had once cast on each other, the affection once implicit in their gestures. She gave in, and like all those who recognize some major mistake in their lives, found a calm indifference settling on her. The boy had, in some sense, been abducted. Some similar force had taken his father too. The meaning of her life had drifted away from her.

Ábel hovered around Tibor with a bad conscience. Ever since the actor had entered their lives the bond between them was fraught with tension and anxiety. Sometimes he was seized by such fierce jealousy that there were afternoons and nights when he had to slip out of his room, trudge over to Tibor’s house, and stand beneath the window to assure himself that Tibor was at home. Other times he would set up watch outside the actor’s house when the performances were over. He’d wait for hours for the actor to arrive, his heart in his mouth as he spied on him, feeling ashamed and yet relieved as he sneaked home again.

He endeavored to separate Tibor from the rest of the gang so that he could be alone with him. This experiment was all the more painful as he knew that Tibor found him dull company. Ábel worked with feverish enthusiasm to find amusements for Tibor. He dragged the secrets of home and hearth before him, hastened to bring him gifts, did his homework for him, got his aunt to cook him her special meals. He played the piano for him. He was more than willing to master the secrets of boxing, high jump, and gymnastics in order to amuse Tibor. He found various shy excuses to share his money with him and when, egged on by the gang, Tibor later executed the grand coup of pawning the family silver, he accompanied Tibor the entire length of the hazardous route. Perhaps if he were a direct witness to Tibor’s fall from grace he might gain some power over him. Perhaps he could be such a close accomplice in Tibor’s fall from grace that, if they had to sin and suffer, at least they might sin and suffer together.

Tibor found his company dull. He was careful to show his boredom nicely, with delicacy and good manners as Ábel noted to his despair. He talked in order to please him and got hold of books in order that Ábel might explain their contents to him.

A copy of Kuprin’s
The Duel
lay on Ábel’s desk.

“Incomprehensible and dull, isn’t it?” Tibor politely remarked. Ábel searched feverishly for an answer but gave up and fell silent, his head bowed.

“Incomprehensible and dull,” he said and stared ahead, stricken with guilt.

What did it matter that he had betrayed the spirits of great writers to gain Tibor’s favor? A volume of the humor magazine
Fidibus
lay on the shelf. Tibor reached over for it with considerable enthusiasm. Ábel observed and suffered as Tibor leafed slowly through pages of smutty jokes, carefully explaining them to him, feeling nervous in the presence of material of whose existence he had heard only by vague report. What could he give Tibor? Whenever they were separated he felt lost and hurt. He prepared himself for their meetings and tried to invent something new and surprising for each occasion. Meanwhile Tibor yawned discreetly, his hand covering his mouth.

He was distressed to feel so stupid, so inadequate to the honor of being Tibor’s companion. He examined himself in front of the mirror. His ginger hair, his myopic eyes, his freckled face, his scrawny body and bad posture made a painful spectacle compared to Tibor, who was fresh-faced, tall, refined yet certain in movement, held his head well, his eyes full of mild haughtiness and self-confidence, his expression conveying a raw yet delicate childishness.

He is my friend, thought Ábel, a hot sweet flush of gratitude running through him. He looks wonderful, he sometimes thought as if for the first time and felt the incomprehensible, agonizing shock of it all over again. He tried to entice Tibor into his own secret world. Tibor gazed with interest at Ábel’s house, taking in the courtyard, the garden, the secrets of the hidey-hole, and all the treasures of the vanished kingdom, while Ábel tried to conjure up for him the world of fairy tales and toys he had lived with in the glazed conservatory. Tibor followed him around, courteous and mildly bored. They talked of girls but Ábel sensed they were both lying. They competed in telling each other ever more lewd imagined adventures, not daring to look each other in the eye. They bragged of several lovers, extraordinary, quite remarkable sweethearts with whom—secretly of course—they were still in touch.

They were talking like this in the garden one day when Ábel suddenly fell silent in the middle of a story.

“It’s a lie,” he said and stood up.

Tibor also stood up, his face pale.

“What do you mean?”

“Every word I have ever spoken about girls was a lie. Not a word of it is true, not one. And you’re lying too. Admit it, you’re lying. Come on. Own up. Tibor, you are lying, aren’t you?”

They were both trembling. Ábel seized Tibor’s hand.

“Yes,” Tibor reluctantly confessed. “I’m lying.”

He freed his hand.

Ábel wanted to share his memories of his father with Tibor. For his father was only a memory now, a confusing figure shrouded in mist, adrift between the concepts of godhead and death. This was the one area where Tibor appeared to follow him with pleasure and enthusiasm. They exchanged memories of their fathers, of their first fears and of every little incident that continued to linger in their minds, glimmering there forever like distant shining myths. Tibor recounted his shock on discovering a fish-bladder condom in his father’s bedside-table drawer and described in some confusion—and with evident pain—his despair the first time his father failed to keep a promise and told a lie. He had run away with Lajos that day to hide in the stable at the barracks and felt so desperate he wanted to die.

They had no difficulty talking about their fathers. Their fathers were at the root of every difficulty: they were insincere, they refused to give straight answers, they wouldn’t say what they were suffering. The skies around their heavenly thrones had darkened to a gray shower of disappointments. The only way they could make proper peace with their fathers, suggested Ábel, would be eventually to form a pact with them.

I don’t think that’s possible, shuddered Tibor. Mine might just shoot me. He is in the mood for it. And he’d be perfectly entitled to, I think. If he came home tomorrow and failed to find the silverware or the saddle…What do you think it would be like if yours came back?

Ábel closed his eyes. His father’s return would be an extraordinary ceremonial occasion, something between a royal funeral and the emperor’s birthday. Bells would no doubt be rung as he marched in, then he’d sit down at the table, deplore the loss of his violin, and look for certain scissors and tweezers. Ábel would enter and stand before him.

“Delighted to see you, sir,” he would say and make a low bow. At that point all hell would break loose. Perhaps his father would raise his hand and hurl thunderbolts at him. But it might be that he would walk up to him and there would be an anxious moment while he considered the possibility of taking him in his arms, embracing him, and kissing him. So they would stare at each other, uncertain what to do.

“Maybe he will apologize,” ventured Ábel.

“Or else shoot me,” Tibor repeated obstinately.

T
HE CRISIS CAME TO A HEAD AT THE BEGINNING
of October. Béla’s father conducted an audit and discovered the missing sums. They were small amounts at first and nobody thought to suspect Béla.

The first consequence of the discovery was that a sixteen-year-old apprentice boy was hauled before the court and sentenced to two years in juvenile detention.

The giant buildings of the house of correction rose beside the road that led to The Peculiar and whenever they retired to their hidden empire they were forced to pass by its outer perimeter. The lights of the windows of the correctional institution shone directly at them as they made their way back at night. The enormous red-brick hulks were visible behind high railings where a guard stood sentry at the entrance.

The hearings were concluded and Béla’s father sighed with relief that his staff and family members were found to be honest. Only they knew that the avalanche had started. The petty infringements discovered by the father, for which the boy rather than Béla was sent to be institution-alized—the apprentice having, to everyone’s surprise, admitted his guilt and spent little time denying anything—were insignificant compared to the “real” crime, Béla’s great break-in. These true facts were liable to be discovered any day. Should they be discovered, they would all be lost.

This possibility did not appeal to the actor either, he having been accepted into the gang so recently. Nevertheless he took the news of Béla’s crime with equanimity and did not blame any of them since he too had enjoyed a fair share of the money. If it were up to him, he said, he would settle the difference from his own pocket. Unfortunately it wasn’t up to him.

Béla had stolen six hundred crowns in one go, six one-hundred-crown bills. His father had sent him down to the post office with the money to post an order to one of his business acquaintances. Béla kept the money and simply told his father that he had sent it but could not find the receipt. The intended recipient, a rice merchant, was bound to claim the money a few days later and then they would all be lost.

What was strange was that Béla had not mentioned this vast sum to the gang. They had long got used to the fact that he always carried smaller amounts with him. Those hundreds seemed to have melted away in Béla’s pocket. When they interrogated him about it, it turned out that the actor who had complained of certain minor inconveniences had received a sum of two hundred crowns in three installments from Béla. The tailor’s bill was also rather more substantial than they had thought. Béla had kept the final invoice from the others, and when the tailor turned awkward, threatening to send it to his father, he paid what was owing.

The money had vanished, as Béla calmly declared, every last cent of it. With the last thirty crowns he had purchased, perfectly calmly, a revolver that they took from him by force and entrusted to Ernõ’s safe keeping. Béla’s behavior during all this was perfectly apathetic: he lost weight and his face seemed to collapse. He was preparing to die.

The gang held long extraordinary discussions that went on day and night. They had to produce the money in twenty-four hours and send it by telegram to Béla’s father’s business partner before irreparable harm was caused. Ábel performed miracles with his aunt, charming and bewitching her, but he could conjure no more than forty crowns from her.

It was at this time that they inducted the actor into the secrets of The Peculiar too. The actor accompanied them with a puzzled yet faintly bored smile, never denying that he had received money from Béla, shrugging his shoulders, for how should he have known where the money was from. I thought you were all rich, he said and gazed straight ahead as if in a dream.

They were not rich but their “warehouse,” as Ernõ referred to the store at The Peculiar, might possibly offer a few solutions. That was how the actor came to be there at the moment of mortal danger. All hands on deck, said the actor, and pretended to be the captain of a sinking ship giving his last orders. There was a time, somewhere between Naples and Marseille…, he said. He was made to swear to keep the secrets of The Peculiar on pain of death.