Tranquility (33 page)

“No, it's just that I probably won't be driving for quite some time. Friday night I was delivering the relief packages when one of the kids slipped in the mud, right under the wheels. You saw it yourself how they run everywhere around the car.”

“Did he die?” I asked.

“Praise the Lord, he got away with a fractured pelvis. They operated on him here, in the János Hospital. That's why I came to Pest.”

“But you almost killed him,” I said, and for the first time since his arrival I saw terror in his face.

“Yes, I almost killed him,” he said.

“I'm sorry. What I meant was that it must be very hard for you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I imagine it's not much consolation that you were delivering relief packages. Or that I also saw how those kids were running around your vehicle.”

“You're right, things like that aren't much consolation.”

“Still, one takes them into account,” I said.

“That's pretty natural,” he said.

“You know, once I talked to a pensioned-off engine driver; after a woman with her two children threw herself in front of his train, this man switched to raising mushrooms.”

“You think that's what I should do too from now on?”

“Of course not. I just mentioned it because a thing like this must be easier to bear for somebody who's on good terms with God.”

“I think you're wrong about that,” he said. “It would be easier to bear Siberia. But as far as I know, God has not freed anyone from pangs of conscience.”

“Of course, you're absolutely right,” I said. “I'll try not to mix up confession with business.”

“Sooner or later you'll discover that there isn't that much difference between confession and writing.”

“That's also a kind of business. Well, anyway, let's leave it,” I said just so we could end the conversation. Then luckily I noticed the teapot on the windowsill and it still had some of my mother's kind of mint tea, as if the pot had been some inexhaustible horn of plenty. “Would you like some tea? It's a bit stale, but potable,” I said, and then added that I had no sugar, and before he could even answer I poured out what was left into the red tin mug for him.

“Thank you,” he said and from under his cassock somehow he produced a small bag of sugar. “They gave me some on the train, to go with the coffee, but I drink coffee without sugar. I usually save sugar for the kids. Maybe you think this is playing Saint Francis, but believe me they like it much better than the embossed pictures of saints.”

“No, it's not playing Saint Francis. Wait, I'll get you a teaspoon. I may still have one somewhere,” I said and went to the kitchen to fish a teaspoon out of all the utensils tossed into one of the corners; and in the meantime, I tried to convince myself that this man did not show up by accident. And one does not take the
Confessions
off the shelf by accident, either. Yes, if there is one person to whom this nightmare can be told, it is Father Lázár from
the middle of nowhere, the man who gives sugar instead of saints' pictures to ran-over Gypsy kids. And while continuing the search for a teaspoon among the nickel silver forks and badly rinsed pots, I set up a model cause-and-effect chain, beginning with one faulty machine of the Dutch textile industry that produces five hundred flawed sweaters, continuing with Father Lázár's taking over the Weérs' ancestral home from the workers militia, all the way to little Gabriel's slipping in the mud and under the Land Rover's wheels, but he survives, so the priest has a reason to come up to Budapest. When I reached the moment the bell rang and I thought I would be opening the door for Eszter, I already knew that this was all rubbish, and not because there is no Good Lord willing to fool around this long with such a house of cards, but because there is a Good Lord who hasn't given a good shit about anything for the last five thousand years.

“Need help?” he asked, and I noticed him only when he was already standing behind me, mug in hand.

“No thanks, I've found one. Just let me rinse it off,” I said. “Let's go back to my room, there's no place to sit here.”

“It's surprising to see you living in such austere conditions. The truth is I was expecting something very different.”

“Well, that's how things have turned out,” I said.

“Are you getting divorced?” he asked.

“No. Well, yes. She took her stuff from here yesterday. That's the reason for this mess.”

“Then maybe I'd better go, anyway.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “What I mean is that I'm glad you've come to visit. I'd like to say I've been waiting for you, but that's simply not true. It never occurred to me that I'd see you again.”

“I see,” he said.

“Of course, there was a possibility that I might visit you. There's no way of knowing when we might start running for a priest; or when we might switch to raising mushrooms in a cellar.”

“I see,” he said.

“Though I feel about priests the same way I feel about doctors. If one must resort to one, the cause is lost already.”

“I see your vanity hasn't diminished. In that case, everything's just fine.”

“Come on, this has nothing to do with vanity. By the way, aspirin is better than a confession in that it reduces your temperature even if you have no faith.”

“Then don't go to confession,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “Do you have a cigarette? I just got divorced, you know, and . . .”

“I'm sorry, I don't.”

“Doesn't matter. Actually, I was the one who wanted her to leave. And I threw out everything, from skin creams to the fire extinguisher.”

“I see,” he said.

“All we had was animosity. I know the Church has different ideas about this, but when it gets to that point, there is no point to it. We were suffocating in each other's company.”

“I see,” he said.

“God probably suffocates you, too, when you are together for a long time.”

“We haven't spent that much time together,” he said.

“All right, but you know what I mean, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “You two hated each other.”

“It's hard not to hate a parasite.”

“I see,” he said.

“Who also asks me, even after peeing, where have you been son?”

“I see,” he said.

“But it doesn't matter. I've got no wife. Which is to say I do, but not on paper. We haven't been living together for a while. I hooked up with a real dangerous tramp and she with an amateur astronomer. But he may be a real one.”

“I see,” he said.

“I started it.”

“I see,” he said.

“But the thing is that I've always lived with my mother.”

“I see,” he said.

“But now, she's managed to die.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Nothing to be sorry about; I'm telling you, we hated each other.”

“Sometimes, that's a very strong bond.”

“That it is,” I said.

“I see,” he said.

“All things considered, for her it's much better this way. And maybe for me, too. At least yesterday I could throw out all this shit.”

“I see,” he said.

“Stop saying ‘I see' all the time; what are you, a parrot?! Is that what you came for?! What else would you like to pump out of me?!”

“I don't want to pump anything out of you. Until now I didn't know there was anything to pump out,” he said and then leaned back like someone who never wanted to leave. “And I even asked you to tell me if I was in the way.”

“In the way! This is not the confessional chair! This is my chair!”

“I know,” he said.

“We loathed each other, that's all. We had reason to! What's so special about that?”

“Yet you write so beautifully about your mother,” he said.

“Come on, cut the crap! Not a blessed line is true in the whole thing! All lies! State-award-winning lies! You believe every piece of shit you read?”

“I did believe it. Don't get mad, but I think that you are lying now, and I haven't even asked you anything. All I did was say ‘I see' a few times. Like a parrot. And you were right: I don't really see. Maybe you hated her, maybe you both had good reasons to hate, maybe you've even thrown out her towels, but all this shouldn't make anybody wet his bed.”

I felt I was going to suffocate. Not of anger but of shame. Or rather of fear.

“Please don't be angry with me,” I said.

“Come, come; what makes you think I've never talked like a truck driver?”

“I'd like you to leave,” I said.

“I'm just airing out the place a little,” he said and opened the window, and then picked up his umbrella. “I'll get some cigarettes and a bite to eat. I imagine it's been a long time. And a drop of beer might come in handy at a time like this.”

“Make that wine,” I said.

.   .   .

The moment I was left alone in the piss-smelling room, I felt the slow assault of the kind of fear that held me in its grip when I thought that woman wanted to poison me. None of this makes sense, I won't have this; I won't negotiate with priests, I thought. I shouldn't have let him in. God
has nothing to do with all this. There is civil law. I will demand they exhume the body and determine the true cause of death, but I will need no mental or spiritual solace. They'll give me five years, and then it's over. Lots of others have endured that much. They will take into account that I am making a confession. After all, I did not bash in her head with an axe. After all, I could get away with it completely. Didn't the doctor say cardiac arrest? If I don't go there, the matter would never come to light. But I will go there, though there may be no need to. Yes, it's quite possible that yesterday the neighbors denounced me to the police. I shouldn't have threatened Mrs. Berényi. And I shouldn't have lost my self-control. They could send anybody here to sniff around. Like this priest, for example. Why not? With this informer, I must be on my guard because he's smart. Too smart. A lousy Communist Youth League secretary who, after having been given some psychological training, was cleverly planted inside the Church. But this is not very likely. This sort of thing is a thing of the past. Still, he is ready to run down to get some wine so we could chat for a while. Well, forget that, Rev. I think I was right in letting him in. At least I know who I am dealing with. And how he spotted that mattress! This secret state security copper spotted it on the fly. And he had the guts to mention it, too; like what could make a grown man wet his bed? He was this close to telling me the answer, right in my face. And I have no intention of denying anything. I simply did not come home that day. That's it. I'm a grown man; I could be a family man too. Or I could have a job. And even if I did, I could still not come home. In certain jobs, one can't come home sometimes for weeks. I should have done this a long time ago. Even before Eszter. Already when Judit left. It's worth five years, or eight. Very well worth it, and then it's all over. And it's worth it even if it's not over. Because this thing won't end just because one
gets put behind bars. Every idiot knows that. You don't need psychological training for that. But I will not discuss anything with priests. For the rest of my life, I don't ever want to see any doctors or priests. I can thank the doctors for that shitty astronomer, too. That Dr. Horsecock understands profoundly that I would not send my mother to an institution, but his advice is that this woman and I cease our sexual contact. No human being should say a thing like that, especially not a head physician. He was also the one who convinced her to go back home. Alone, of course, because it's better this way. Well, it's no fucking better this way. I know exactly what I have to do but I don't ever want to see a priest or a physician again. And they can't exhume her, I forbid it. I'll break the Lord's hand too if he tries to touch my mother, I thought, and then finally found my coat.

.   .   .

From behind the bushes of the Museum Garden I watched him approach with the net shopping bag. He must have stayed upstairs, ringing the bell, for a good ten minutes and when he stepped out the main entrance, he seemed angry rather than disappointed. He hung around for a little while on the sidewalk, looked at his watch, glanced up at the open window and then finally left. The pouring rain was like a cold shower, but I thought that it was much better this way. There is nothing sorrier in the world than to whine to a priest, like a jilted floozy. In fact, he had good intentions. It's my fault that I have no need for priests. Maybe, if he had come at a different time, I thought, and then I returned to the apartment because I did not know where one should go at a time like this.

The plastic bag was there, suspended from the door handle, and in it the wine and the cigarettes, the half pound of bologna and two packets of Maggi soup, and he even slipped a piece of paper between door and door-post
that toward evening he'd come around again, but if for some reason I don't want to talk to him now, I could visit him at any time at all.