Tranquility (25 page)

“I've no change,” said the other, then I heard a woman's voice saying she had, and by the time she began fumbling in her pocketbook, I could see, though everything seemed black-and-yellow as when they train a flashlight straight into your eyes.

“Don't,” I said and tried to get up.

“Don't move, we'll call a doctor right away,” the woman said.

“No need,” I said and, holding on to the arm of one of them, I managed to get up.

“You can't go anywhere like this,” the man said.

“Let me go!” I said and yanked my wrist out of his hand.

“Would you
believe
that?!” I heard the woman's voice, but I was running already and when I was sure they weren't following, I stopped in a doorway to catch my breath.

I went on foot until Nap Street, as if this half hour had meant anything, as if something could still happen while I make my way on foot to her place. I should have let them call an ambulance, I thought. She probably would have come to see me in the hospital, I thought. Attached to the infusion tube, things like this no longer count, I thought, and then somebody yelled at me from a car, fuck's the matter with your eyes, bud?! watch where you're going! Or when bullets are flying, I thought. If the Russians were to blow Budapest to Hell before leaving, I thought. When
bullets are flying, it no longer matters who we had gone to bed with, I thought. Then the only important thing is who we are dragging with us to the cellar.

She lay on the mattress as if she were asleep.

“That woman disgusts me,” I said, but she didn't reply. The street lamp threw some light into the room, though it would have been better not to see anything. “I hate her, do you understand? I just can't stop it,” I said and that's when she opened her eyes.

“What can't you stop?” she asked sleepily and stretched out her arm so I'd hug her. “I didn't think you were coming,” she said, and only then did it dawn on me that she didn't even have a light-gray dress.

.   .   .

Before going to see Jordán for the last time, I planned out everything on square-lined paper, using a ruler and protractor. With the precision of an engineer, I figured the place of every word and gesture, composed and then memorized every sentence. In front of her door, I went over everything one last time, rang the bell, and then I allowed this visit to unfold the way all the previous ones had.

.   .   .

She was getting ready to go to some stand-up reception at an embassy, where I could really accompany her without jeopardizing my healthy relationship with my partner. Then, while telling me about this and that, from a drawer she produced the revolver bullet that had stuck in the wall after having passed through comrade Jordán's skull. It was encased in silver because she didn't like gold. She even wore it for a period, a kind of souvenir from death; in those days, she tended to be mawkish. And she assumed I realized it was by far not as easy to get hold of a spent bullet than, say, have
two stage hands steal a few good pieces of scenery from the theater's store room. And of course she knew that I had as much right to it as she did, but for some reason she still held on to material mementos. Perhaps sometime in the future, when I deserve it, she said. You can be sure I'll soon deserve it, I said, and grabbed her cyanide-smelling breasts, and while I ripped off all her clothes I again repeated everything to myself, and then I got up.

“The thing is that you disgust me,” I said, and wiped my sticky hands. “I think you counted on a domestic animal when we started to play this animal game. Well, you've fucked up. Instead of a lapdog you caught a hyena,” I said and zipped up my pants. “If you feel you can't come by yourself, I'd be happy to send someone up from the street. Maybe you can still make that reception,” I said and put on my jacket.

“You're trying to be disgusted with yourself, darling, but it's not that simple. You'd have to work a little harder for that. You can't imagine how much one forgives to one's prick,” she said and even in the stairwell, I could hear her forced laughter.

.   .   .

Where have you been son?

Actually, I've been with you, Mother.

.   .   .

Probably no one in our neighborhood had seen her, but everyone seems to have heard of her. Rumor had it that this girl was the new miracle weapon, more dangerous than napalm; wherever she is deployed, cash registers don't stop ringing as lingerie is sold like hotcakes – like the sugary marmalade dubbed Hitler-bacon back in '44. Housewives cut their kitchen spending, bought pork baloney instead of chicken, and saved on the Sunday liver-paste to have the cash for that petticoat when the time
comes; with lace around the breasts and snaps at the bottom, between the legs; there was no marriage gone to pot this petticoat could not repair. Then the posters indeed appeared Monday morning in the windows of the Aranypók chain store and, as expected, people were thronging before the life-size image of Naomi, looking for the right adjectives. Passively, Naomi listened to all the descriptions, from buxom bitch to pretty doe, but the cash registers weren't ringing because, it was discovered, the price of at least another six months' worth of liver paste had to be saved to purchase the petticoat. But old Mr. Ligeti, whose daughter-in-law was the cashier in the Újpest branch of the Aranypók, managed to get hold of a life-size image of Naomi. When he and Mr. Vértes spread the carton-reinforced poster on the floor, a beer mug holding down each corner, Jolika said it wouldn't work that way, but in half a minute somebody was already standing on the table from where Naomi could be seen very well, and many others demanded that Jolika bring some tape and put the buxom doe up on the wall instead of the Unicum poster; Jolika picked up the cleaning bucket, doused Naomi, and with the heels of her shoe ripped the poster to bits while screaming that whoever wants to look at whores should go up to the square, and she'd close her establishment and never want to see anybody's mug again.

“Take it easy,” I said to her, after she swept up the slop that was left of the doe.

“Shut up or I'll kick you out too,” she said and slammed the ashtray down in front of me. “What the hell do they think this place is?”

“They just liked the poster,” I said.

“Dumb assholes,” she said.

“That's their taste,” I said.

“Would you put up with something like this? If she was beautiful, all right, that would be a different story. Don't think I can't understand that. But where do you all get the nerve to do this? Ligeti's prostate is gone already, still he brings that damn thing in here. Why doesn't he take it home and tape it up on the wall for his wife?”

“You're right, Jolika,” I said and continued to sit around a while longer; only after I listened to the Noonday chronicle did I finally open the package I had picked up at the post office that morning.

I didn't feel anything, actually. It turned out to be exactly the way I had imagined it would; somehow it didn't look like a real book. One you could catalogue among the W's or use to steady, say, a wobbling closet if the floor sank a little. I took a razorblade from my wallet and cut out the penultimate page from one of the copies because I didn't want my mother to see who the editor of the book was.

“What's this?” Jolika asked.

“Christmas presents,” I said, because I couldn't think of anything else; I wasn't prepared for this question.

“A little early for that,” she said.

“I don't like running around the last minute,” I said, then quickly repacked the complimentary copies and paid my bill.

.   .   .

Where have you been son?

My book came out, Mother.

I don't want it, Son, she said, and continued to watch the Friday afternoon soap opera, but I put the razor-censored copy on her table, pulled the door shut behind me, and listened from the foyer. In a few minutes, the easy chair's springs creaked and the sighs of the Brazilian or Argentinean
slave girl in the TV were intermingled with the sound of quickly flipping pages. Then I heard her turn individual pages. I knew she was looking for page thirty-four first,
The Story of Acting
, because that was her favorite.

.   .   .

I poured myself a cup of coffee and then spent most of the afternoon figuring out what dedication I should write to Eszter. The drafts I made would have been enough for a whole soap opera; in the end, I left only
To My Wife
, because I thought that would make her happy. On Kálvin Square I bought a single rose and showed up at the library for closing time, but one of her coworkers told me she had left three hours earlier, in the company of an older, redheaded woman; I said thank you.

.   .   .

I walked down Andrássy Road to Jordán's place but they weren't there, so I had a coffee in the Artists' Café, also some cake because I was pretty hungry. I gave the rose to the waitress, out of gratitude for remembering that I don't like whipped cream in my espresso and always want a pint of soda on the side. The waitress said that until then she thought I was the most phlegmatic man in town; I replied that's what I had thought about her, quickly correcting myself that I wasn't referring to her being manly, but to the fact that until then she usually just plunked down my soda on my table; we had a good laugh over that.

I put the book in my pocket because I still wanted to give it to Eszter, and then walked all the way to Nap Street to give them more time to talk, if the two of them were at her place. I probably never felt so light in my life before. On Rákóczi Road a whore asked me if I wanted to unload at a discount; she could bring me off anywhere without having to go to bed. I told her my mother wouldn't let me, then lit her cigarette and we had a nice chat. She was a very nice girl, lying to me that she was only doing it
until she made enough for a house and garden somewhere in Wekerle; and I lied that I was a theater critic, making a thousand forints before taxes for comedies and fifteen hundred for tragedies, because the latter are harder to write something good about since usually they're so laughable. I would have liked to talk to her more but her pimp showed up and she said I'd better vanish if I wouldn't screw.

.   .   .

Eszter fell on my neck and kissed me all over. I was all lipstick; all the years I had known her, I had never seen her with so much lipstick.

“Come on, let me have it already,” she said and started to rifle in my pockets, and then I watched as she plopped down on the mattress and leafed through the book, smelled it like a love letter, inhaling the glue and the print. Then she noticed the dedication,
To My Wife
, which I had forgotten to cut out.

“Is this an honest to goodness proposal?” she asked and, colored by her makeup, her tears were streaming black.

“Yes, I only forgot the question mark at the end,” I said and smelled the bitter odor of almonds emanating from the walls.

“But I could answer Yes, couldn't I?”

“First, let's find a priest who is willing to marry two nonbelievers,” I said.

“I'm not a nonbeliever anymore,” she said, sobbing on my neck, and I felt that her skin had soaked up the smell of that woman.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

“Can't you see? What more can I do so you'd notice?”

“For example, you could get into the tub so I could wash off all this paint on you.”

“You can't now. We have to hurry.”

“Where to?”

“Dinner at nine. You should fix yourself up a little bit, too. Imagine, your editor came into the library today and invited us to dinner,” she said, kissed me all over again, then rushed into the bathroom to start making up all over again.

“A-ha,” I said.

“She left only an hour ago. We spent the whole afternoon talking about you.”

“Really?” I said, and from the door, I watched her trying to polish her nails evenly but being very inexperienced, the tiny brush kept slipping onto her skin.

“She is a very pleasant woman, by the way. I don't know what your problem is with her. She is not at all the kind of culturecunt you've made her out to be.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“She also thinks you're a genius. She's just worried that you won't learn foreign languages, at least English. She asked me to stand over you with a whip, only then you might do it, she thinks.”

“We'll see,” I said.

“Not ‘we'll see,' she's absolutely right. And there are cute little whips for sale,” she said and blew on her nails to make them dry faster. “She said the French edition would be done soon, and maybe the German one too.”

“I wouldn't count on that,” I said.

“Right. You shouldn't get overconfident,” she said and wanted to kiss me, but thought better of it; if she did, she'd smear the makeup and could start everything all over again. “What should I wear?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I can't go in my slip. Would you bring me the one with the laced sleeves?”

“I wouldn't,” I said.