Tranquility (16 page)

.   .   .

Don't hold it against me, Mother, that I made a decent critic out of this phony scribbler. A critic who later on dared to ask why Miss Weér says lines such as, “Oh, let the wind take your thoughts,” or “It's best to live dangerously,” like a fairground barker. Really, why was Iocasta your lousiest role, Mother? So bad, that even Tamás Effenbach recoiled at your histrionics. Why did this, your most tailor-made role, become the only major stain on your entire career?

That apology attempt, by the way, proved superfluous, because three days later we welcomed guest director Jerzy Bukowski, who guzzled his vodka in English before going to bed, but after ejaculation snored in Polish, and who would have liked it very much if from now on all of us, like one big family, etc., because he had a penchant for the idyllic. “Togedder,” he said and hugged us at the bathroom door, his undershirt, unchanged for
many days, reeking with the horrendous smell-combination of Russian vodka, Hungarian aftershave lotion, and Polish sweat, but he was happy when Judit told him you stink, Jerzy, because he didn't understand a word of it. He was also very glad that we were so nice and blond, all four of us. A real “femily.” Actually, we were glad too. We liked that unconventional, all-embracing Polish Catholicism with which he slapped your butt, and wanted to take the time for a leisurely breakfast with the kids and only then start working on Mrozžek, letting your colleagues “vait” a brief half-hour. We liked his “vatiz disspreading cheese” again, and how, while the eggs were boiling he'd run down to the food shop for a little peasant sausage and two bottles of vodka. Actually, we were sorry that in a month's time he'd be going back to Warsaw to his own all-blond wife and children, whose picture he had stuck on our refrigerator so he could look at it after supper and turn a little sorrowful for the sake of inspiration. What a pity they were so far away, he was sure we would all love one another very much. There would be one “big femily, veri big”; his daughter plays the piano, yours the violin, and the boys don't do nothing, which is also a perfect match.

Yes, Mother, I was sorry Jerzy Bukowski had to go back to the secret ideals waiting for him, to his unconventional Catholicism, unconventional theater, and unconventional family. I can't say I loved him, but at least he didn't try to tell me how happy my mommy was last night with Santa Claus. And that's nothing to be sneezed at.

.   .   .

“What do you think would happen if I visited your place?” Eszter asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Besides family, nobody's been there for more than ten years. She only agreed to let the tax collector in.”

“Nobody's ever rung the bell?”

“Of course they have. At least three people. That's how many people who have missed the news that it would be to no one's advantage in any way whatsoever to ring Miss Rebeka Weér's doorbell. It's a shitty situation when one has only lovers and acquaintances.”

“Watch your language.”

“But it's really a shitty situation. And I can prove it. In short, in the first few weeks, there were still about three uninformed people, and my mother knew precisely what to say to each of them, and do it while they were still at the door, to make them forget even the thought of another visit ever. She praised the husband of the first one, sent her best to the lover of the second, and in the case of the third one, she needed only to badmouth the woman's hairdresser. When it comes down to it, humans are not such complicated animals. And my mother was pretty good with words. Only the district physician managed to get as far as her room, because my mother thought I had called him. She thought he was going to send her to the loony bin. But he only came to the house because some months earlier Miss Weér had forgotten to sign some papers.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Mother was very happy about the unexpected visit and told the physician that lately she had been having pains around her waist. She even showed him where, for which the doctor was very grateful. They sent me to the food shop for a bottle of rosé and some cookies, and she apologized for the mess in the house, but such is the life of artists, always on the run, and then complimented him on his tweed jacket and gave him an autograph right on the top sheet of his prescription block.”

“I guess the doctor prescribed the Richtofit sports cream for her.”

“He did. After he left, my mother locked me in the bathroom, put on her dishwashing gloves and, using the cord of the iron, electrified the handle of the front door, so that in the future anybody I'd call to take her to the Lipótmező asylum would drop dead while still outside the door, out on the gallery. But luckily she connected the wrong wires and only knocked out the main fuse.”

“That's awful.”

“You can get used to it,” I said. “Thank God, she never forgets to use her rubber gloves when she fools around with electricity. She's very particular about endangering her life. By the way, if the TV and the hairdryer could be worked manually, I'd still be sitting on the toilet seat.”

“You're crazy, how can you laugh at something like this?” she asked, but she was also laughing.

“How? By knowing that Eszter Fehér will hug me right this minute,” I said, and she immediately hugged me, her tongue battled mine for minutes in the dark hollows of our mouths, but then I let her win. I let her conquer all the territories between lips and throat, because in the meantime I discovered the slit in her summer dress. “You are really crazy, we can't do it here,” she said, but I felt how the nipples were swelling, I already felt how the clitoris became stone hard, like those crystals that in the depths of a mine are softer than sea sponges, but the moment they are touched by sunshine they become as hard as Bohemian ruby. I was already feeling the fingers entering between the buttons of my fly and I heard the beating of her heart. The hammering of the cardiac valves reverberated through the East Budapest unit of the public catering industry where, because of God's special benevolence, nobody set foot all morning. “More!” she gasped from the fortress of the corner table of the enormous dining hall, and while one of my hands reached the very depths of pleasure's straight labyrinth,
I clamped the other one on her mouth, because I knew that her squealing could rouse every member of the serving staff. All the waiters would show up immediately and all the dishwashing girls would run out of the kitchen, but even if that happened, we wouldn't be able to retreat. One more little movement and all of Kuwait's oil wells and Iceland's geysers would turn yellow. And suddenly the artificial flowers wrapped around the radiators were coming to life, the marble-patterned linoleum and the Cubist false ceiling began to undulate, the fluorescent lighting went haywire and the plastic curtains were fluttering in their blinding whiteness as if someone, using the cord of an iron, had electrified the Rozmaring Restaurant earmarked for demolition. Then the walls trembled, the entire socialist realism environment along with the two beer mugs and a full ashtray, was shaken to its foundations, and then Eszter fell forward on the table. I would have followed suit, aiming at her shoulder, but in the distant dimness I spied the Good Lord's much too anthropomorphic figure and he asked whether we wanted anything else, and I said I didn't know, or rather, of course we did, please bring two more of the same.

“More than two,” whispered Eszter, her face still buried in her arms, because she was afraid that her face would reveal everything. As if now a single gaze of hers would violate every regulation of public decency; and I felt how with one hand she was quickly trying to make order under the table.

“A year and a half, suspended,” I said when we were finally left alone.

“That's all? I'd get at least ten years of solitary confinement,” she said, smiling, and rubbed her slippery finger across my lips before kissing me, though I was about to say that in that case I'd get life.

“Why would you like to see her?” I asked her when we were on the street.

“I really don't know,” she said.

“She hates you enough without ever having seen you.”

“I can imagine. Have you talked to her about me?”

“No. She knows you by your smell.”

“I'd hate more, too, somebody I knew only by smell.”

“You are not my mother,” I said.

“I don't think it's her I'd really like to see. Of course, I'd want to see her, but that's quite different. That's only curiosity. One can get over that easily. Fear is much worse.”

“You've no reason to be afraid of her.”

“I don't think I'm afraid of her, more likely of her son. Because you're helping her; you lock her up in the apartment as if you were a prison guard.”

“Let's go then,” I said and got hold of her hand, though I knew that with the unerring precision of a heart surgeon my mother would find the one sentence with which to excise from the chambers of the heart the revived plastic curtains, the undulating false ceiling, and the semen-burnt linoleum of the Rozmaring Restaurant. My stomach was quivering but I let Eszter buy some flowers in an underpass. We got as far as the threshold. Mother merely gave her the once-over and wouldn't even ask what her name was.

I won't suffer your showing off your whores. Take her to a flophouse, like all the others, she said, and slammed the door, and that's when I saw how the tears washed the last remnants of light out of Eszter's eyes. This like all the others hurt more than being slapped or spat at in the face.

.   .   .

Plough field surrounded by barbed wire, watchtower in the distance. Dark, uniformly rectangular pits as far as the eye can see. In front of every pit, an enameled sign with the date of planting on it. A uniformed doctor takes me around the settlement. He explains my duties before I begin the job. He stops by one of the pits and points to the depths. “Pay particular attention to this one; this is the one we expect the most from,” he says. Down there, an old blind woman is brandishing her white cane.

“Wake up, you have to go,” Eszter said.

“I'm not going,” I said.

“Of course you are.”

“I shouldn't have gone home ten years ago.”

“That may be so, but now you have to.”

“I hate her.”

“Don't hate her instead of me,” she said.

.   .   .

Where have you been son?

Don't you dare ask me that ever again, Mother.

Don't you dare bring your whores over here. I don't need any audience!

Eszter, Mother! Eszter Fehér! Learn that name, know it from now on! Remember it better than your own!

This is my apartment. Here I call her whatever I want to!

You're wrong, Mother!

Whore! Whore, do you understand?! A lousy whore! Her kind is good only for you to ease your load!

Stop it, Mother, I beg you!

Shoves her face in here to sniff around! She's been fucked a few times and already she's coming here with her little flowers!

I said stop it!

I know that this is the slut you've been fucking for months! Don't think I don't know it! Your little Eszter! And this little Eszter wants to ruin me!

Nobody can ruin you any more, Mother!

She's the one who talks your head off, isn't she? Before she got stuck on your cock like a leech, you didn't dare talk to me like this!

That was a big mistake I made, Mother! And everybody who didn't dare talk to you like that made the same mistake. The entire Hungarian theater world made a mistake. Comrade Fenyő was the only exception.

Stop it!

And Judit dared only in her letters! Only from the other end of the world did she dare to write that . . .

Shuttup!

It makes no difference whether I shut up or not! I couldn't say anything new, anyway, except mention the things that drove you mad.

Get out of here! Into your own room!

Anybody who doesn't walk out into the sun for ten years is mad, Mother! Insane, you understand?! Why can't you perish somehow?! Drop dead already! I bellowed and slammed the door, then lay trembling on my bed, waiting for my veins to explode, or at least to suffocate; after all, I had said something no human being should ever utter.

About ten minutes later, she knocked on my door. She stood there, in her rearranged dressing gown, her hair freshly combed, her lips freshly painted, and asked, where have you been son, as someone who remembered nothing, and I almost broke down. I had something to take care of, Mother, I said, I made some tomato soup, she said, and then poured the lukewarm watery slop into the plates and our spoons clinked against the plates in unison;
in unison we broke off a piece of bread and in unison we swallowed it. I already knew she wasn't pretending, she really didn't remember anything I had said to her. And from now on she would never remember anything, which meant that we would have to live our lives differently from the way we had been until then.

Tomorrow, buy me some fruit, she said.

All right, I'll buy some apples. I said.

You should buy grapes. I have a craving for grapes.