A Book of Memories (53 page)

Fuck you, I said to him
—and it was for Krisztián's sake that I said that.

Actually, I'd have loved to tell him we shouldn't have done this, except I couldn't forget so fast that it was originally my idea, and a disgraceful act cannot be put right by another act of dishonesty; he was also important to me, but not like that, surely not like that! and besides, the moment of victory was not a good time to remind him of the horrid way he'd got back at me; I preferred my own quiet disgust.

But not leaving made me feel even more disgusted with myself; inert, I turned over to lie on my stomach and kept my eyes on the forest to see if they were coming.

In a way I was grateful to Kálmán; by staying with him I managed to salvage some of my honor, and my cowardice would be put in the right perspective, at least between the two of us; I was even more grateful that he didn't take advantage of this, said not a word, even though he understood, perhaps accepted for the first time, how important Krisztián was to me and that he, Kálmán, was of no account
—I saw his acknowledgment in the form of a jeering glint, hardly more than the flash of a sideways glance.

The sun beat down on us mercilessly, not even the wind could relieve the heat, the rock was hot, and nothing was happening save for the flies swarming; we should have accepted the fact that they weren't coming, though they might charge out of the woods any second, because I was sure they wouldn't leave matters unavenged. I could have yelled, They're coming! it even occurred to me not to warn him, let them come, let them do with us what they would! with the trees groaning and creaking in the wind, cracking and snapping with each gust, branches bending and foliage sweeping forward then springing back, gaps opening and closing between the bushes, light flashing irregularly as it tried to elude the pursuing shadows, it wasn't hard to expect the sound of running feet, to see spying faces among the leaves, bodies advancing from or retreating behind tree trunks; but nothing happened, no matter how much I hoped to win back Krisztián by betraying Kálmán; they weren't coming. And I had to stay on the overheated rock, on the lookout, alert, all according to some unwritten code of honor; stay with him, though he didn't mean anything to me, I didn't care about him. To take my mind off things, I began to collect stones and lay them out in a neat row in front of me, as if to prove to myself that I was ready for combat
—should the need arise, the ammunition was to hand—but I tired of this, too, and there was nothing else to do; whenever Kálmán stirred and my foot accidentally touched his shoulder, I pulled away; I didn't enjoy the warmth of a strange body.

Of course we also had to figure on their returning with possible reinforcements; one of them might still be nearby, keeping an eye on us, while the other ran off to get help; yet all I could think of was Krisztián's knife, that he might surprise me from the back, and this made me feel even more strongly the scorching sun on my back and the futile cooling efforts of the wind.

It was around noontime, though the midday bell that would reverberate through the woods hadn't yet been rung; the sun was directly overhead, its blaze felt as if it were right on top of us; if it were not for the wind blowing so strongly, it would have been impossible to endure that hour of idle waiting; all that time I spoke to him only twice, to ask if he saw anything, because I didn't; but he didn't answer, and from his stubborn silence I could surmise that our bodies lying next to each other on that hot rock were gripped by the same desperate, pent-up fury; anxiety held our fury at bay and vice versa, the sharp point of hatred was blunted by fear, though this restrained yet somehow still freewheeling emotion was no longer aimed at the other boys but at ourselves; it was no ordinary fear, not a fear of being beaten, surrounded, overwhelmed, defeated, because by now it was clear we didn't have a chance, and having no chance reduces one's fears; the problem was that during the time passed in uncertainty we ourselves, or rather the peculiar feeling lingering between us, destroyed our advantage; this is the fate of victors who finish the job left undone by the enemy; our bodies, our skin, our very silence carried on a withering conversation during that anxious, uncertain hour, and it became clear to us that our victory was not only morally dubious but also unacceptable for simpler, more pragmatic reasons; we couldn't agree even on the significance of the victory, since it meant something different to each of us, and little by little we began to sense the limits of our friendship, to understand that without the other two boys our momentary alliance simply didn't exist; we could rebel against them, and during a brief period of plotting and acting against them might have felt our relationship to be as strong as theirs, but it could not cope with our victory or sustain it; there was a secret lack here, we could not measure up, Kálmán and I could only be accomplices at best, for we lacked the very harmony
—of being complementary and suited to each other—for which we had attacked them, which I envied and found so irritating, which proved as impregnable as a rockbound fortress; and it was with the magic radiance of this harmony—yes, magic radiance, I'm not afraid of the phrase—that they drew us into their friendship and ruled over us, and we appreciated the good that came from this arrangement; and now we had squandered this good, exhausted and shattered it; it wasn't them that we had destroyed but our relationship! Kálmán's rightful place was with them; his easy calm complemented their nimbleness, his lumbering wisdom was a proper match for their resourcefulness, his benevolence a mate to their cruel humor; I was on the outside and could get close to them only through my friendship with Kálmán, like a cool observer of a triumvirate who, by standing on the sidelines, reinforces their cohesiveness as well as their hierarchy—Krisztián was at the top, of course, by virtue of his irresistible charm and intelligence, which had to be accepted, no rebellion should or could topple it; he lived in us, being with him was our life, and perhaps I even had a need to suffer because of him, for something good did come of it, something real and whole and workable; what I understood right away—that we were fatally defeated in the very moment of our victory and that along with my pains I'd lose everything that was any good in my life—took Kálmán longer to comprehend, though now I sensed a message sent out by his body that it was no use lying here, no use waiting, that we were defending our honor for nothing, since even if we managed to defeat them, which was just about impossible, the broken order of the world could never be restored; there'd be no new order, only chaos.

Look, he said suddenly, quietly, choking with surprise, and though I'd been waiting for just such a sound or signal, it came too suddenly
—in the desert of endless waiting the slightest stirring of even a single grain of sand seems sudden and unexpected—and I perked up, but this wasn't the same voice, not his pugnacious voice but his old one, a joyful voice expressing fond surprise at seeing what he'd anticipated all along, as when during our rovings he'd spot a fledgling bird fallen from its nest or a hairy caterpillar or a tiny porcupine among the dry leaves: I had to sit up to see what he was referring to.

There it was: down where the winding trail, rising sharply from the street and hidden by two big elder bushes, ran into the clearing, there among the windblown leaves was a flash of white, then something red, a bare arm, a blaze of blond hair, bobbing, moving closer, then popping out from behind the bushes: the three girls.

They were moving steadily up the trail, sticking close together, slightly blocking one another; they must have come in single file on the trail and now, having reached the open field, were jostling one another a little, full of small movements, leaning to the side, throwing out their arms, chatting and giggling; Hédi, the one in the white dress, was holding flowers
—she loved picking them—and, leaning back, kept brandishing them in front of Livia, behind her, even stroking her face with them, gently, teasingly; then she leaned over to Maja and whispered something in her ear, though it seemed she meant Livia to hear it, too; Livia, whose skirt was the red spot we'd seen before, leaped in front of the other two, laughing, and as if wanting to carry them along with her momentum seized Maja's hand; but Hédi grabbed Livia's hand and waved her flowers in Maja's face this time; and then they stayed this way, hand in hand, their bodies almost pressing together, advancing slowly, taking very small steps, first Hédi, Livia in the middle, then Maja, completely absorbed in one another, and at the same time exchanging words, moving in an unknown formation, hovering along on the rhythm of their continually crisscrossing conversations, their faces and necks leaning close to and away from one another, their progress in the windswept, wildly undulating grass at once swift and majestically measured.

The sight itself wasn't so unusual, since they often walked this way, hand in hand, clinging to one another, and it also wasn't unusual that Hédi should be wearing Maja's white dress and Maja Hédi's navy-blue silk one, though because of the differences in their build the dresses didn't quite fit them; Hédi was taller, rounder, "stronger in the bust," they'd say among themselves, the mildly judgmental words referring only to how the dress made her look; I always paid close attention to such remarks, eager to learn whether they had a rivalry similar to the one found among us boys, but they weren't concerned so much with the difference in breast size as with the right place for the bust seam, which they debated with great seriousness and adjusted with little pulls and tucks, even unstitching and basting it anew; and although this managed to lay my suspicion about rivalry to rest, I still felt it wasn't quite unfounded; anyway, Maja's dresses "unflatteringly" flattened Hédi's breasts, but it seemed that the not-quite-perfect fits, the continually mentioned differences in build, was what made swapping dresses so attractive for them; however, they never swapped clothes with Livia and were very sensitive to the pride she took in her clothes, so while they tried on her dresses, they never insisted on wearing them; her wardrobe was rather shabby and limited in any case, though they always found her things "adorable" and eagerly outdid each other in lending her scarves and bracelets, pins, belts, ribbons and necklaces, things that would "show Livia off," as they put it, and that she accepted with engaging bashfulness; even now she was wearing a coral necklace Maja filched from her mother whenever she wanted to wear that white dress; the two girls did not seem to mind that these uneven exchanges tended to favor Maja, because most of Hédi's casually loose-fitting dresses looked quite good on her; at least in our eyes she seemed more grown-up in them, like a woman, her gangly awkwardness vanishing in their ample material; in fact, it seemed that our overlooking the unevenness of these exchanges eliminated the actual, hurtful differences which caused so much jealous rivalry between them and from which Maja suffered so much, Hédi being the pretty one, the prettier of the two, or, more precisely, the one considered pretty by everybody, the one everybody fell in love with; whenever the three of them were out together she was the one everybody looked at, behind whose back grown men whispered lewd comments, who was felt up and pinched in dark movie theaters or on crowded streetcars, even when Krisztián was with her; she cried, felt ashamed, tried to hunch her back so that her arms would cover and protect her breasts, but all in vain; and women were crazy about her, too, praising her hair especially, touching it like a rare jewel or digging into it with their fingers; with her soft blond hair falling in great shiny waves over her shoulders, her smooth, high forehead, her full cheeks and huge, somewhat protruding blue eyes, she was the "prettiest of them all," which hurt Maja so deeply that she always brought it up, kept dwelling on it, extolling Hédi's beauty more loudly than anyone, as if proud of this gesture, hoping that people would correct her exaggerations; what made Hédi's eyes especially interesting and dazzling were her long jet-black eyelashes and equally dark eyebrows, the precise curve and density of which she controlled and maintained with the help of a tweezer, plucking out hairs she considered superfluous
—a very delicate operation which I saw her do once: with two fingers she stretched the skin above the eye; while working with the tweezers, snipping and plucking the stray hairs, she kept glancing at me from the mirror, explaining that although thin eyebrows were the current fashion and some women plucked them out altogether and drew new ones in with a pencil, "like that cook in school, that monster," a truly fashionable woman wasn't supposed to conform blindly to everything new but had to find the proper balance between her own assets and the prevailing trends; now Maja, for instance, often made the mistake of wearing something that, though very much in fashion, didn't look at all good on her, and if she said something about it to her, Maja would be gravely offended, which was childish; as a matter of fact, her eyebrows could use some plucking but she said it hurt, well, it didn't hurt that much, and anyway, if one had brows as thick and ugly as Maja's, one should use hair remover, which didn't hurt at all, and she should use it on her legs, too, which were terribly hairy; and the reason she didn't want to make her own eyebrows too thin was because that would make her nose look even bigger, and it was big enough as it was, so in the end she'd lose more than she would gain; her nose, skinny and slightly hooked, might indeed have been a bit large, she had her father's nose, she once told me, the most Jewish feature of her face, otherwise she could pass for a German, even, she added with a laugh; she'd never known her father, was too young to have remembered him—just as Krisztián had no memories of his father—he was "deported"; the word made as profound an impression on me as that other phrase about Krisztián's father, who "fell in battle"; and I liked running my fingers over her nose, because then I felt I was touching something Jewish; in any case, the color of her skin made up for this tiny flaw, if one can call flaw the irregular which is so organic a part of beauty; her complexion complemented her beauty, made it whole, though not fair, as one might expect in a person with blond hair and blue eyes but with the hue of a crisp, well-baked roll, and it was this color, full of tenderness, that created the harmony of perfection out of her sharply contrasting features; and I haven't even mentioned her round shoulders, her strong, slender legs that touched the ground so softly, her narrow waist and mature, womanly hips, on account of which she was once sent home with a note from her teacher for supposedly wiggling them too much; Mrs. H
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vös came flying into school and was heard screaming in the teachers' room that they'd do better to curb their own filthy imaginations than scribbling such revolting notes, and teachers like that ought to be "banned from the classroom"; Hédi's exquisite perfection did not just make her special among us but made her a distinctive and provocative beauty, a true beauty; with the help of these swaps, sometimes she sought relief from this image of perfect beauty, the swaps being all the more attractive, since Maja's dresses were nicer and more interesting.