Tranquility (18 page)

“I've just come to get this,” she said and picked up the manuscript of my book from her desk. “Lock up when you're done.”

.   .   .

I locked the door, threw the key in the mailbox, and thought I'd never have the courage to see her again, but I couldn't stand it longer than three days. I stood steadfastly in front of the library until evening. Instead of flowers in my hand, in my pocket I had a pair of deerskin gloves that was not a prop from the theater but, along with three silver spoons, a late-romantic landscape, and a few faded photographs, part of what had remained to us from the Weérs' Greater Hungary of yore, a kind of extravagant addition to the violin. I had no idea who E.W. may have been, whose monogram had been branded into the gloves the same way sheep were branded so no harm would come to the family's wealth even if under the clearly branded trees the shepherd, marked with the same branding iron, would fall asleep. In short, I didn't know who this E.W. was; I only knew that I'd give all of Greater Hungary for Eszter's forgiveness. Then she walked out the main entrance and I, forgetting about all the old family junk, turned to go without a word because I felt neither anger nor pity from her, only indifference. A most merciless indifference against which neither the charred omelet nor my hand grasping the operating room's door handle would have been a strong enough argument. I reached Lenin Boulevard when she grabbed my arm from behind and turned me around like a rag doll.

“You forgot this,” she said and shoved the key into my hand, and then she just left me there in the middle of the street to watch her hurry to the other side, against the red light, to catch the streetcar pulling into the stop.

Since Judit's defection, that was the first time I bawled, at the corner of
Lenin Boulevard and Népköztársaság Road, with an Elzett key in my hand, compared to which Saint Peter's key was a poor imitation, a worthless cellar key. Yes, I felt that now, when compared to Lenin Boulevard and the entire Hungarian People's Republic, even the blessed kingdom of the Lord was somewhere below, in the layers of clay under the yellow metro.

.   .   .

“You won't find anything in my closets or anywhere. Nothing, you understand?”

“I do. But I told you every . . .”

“That's you. And even you don't tell everything. But I hate to lie, so please don't force me to. My father didn't rape me, I've never been a whore, and I have no lovers. I guess that's what you wanted to know.”

“I just wanted to get to . . .”

“I am exactly the person you know me to be and who I've been ever since I've known you,” she said, then put on E.W.'s deerskin gloves and began to button up my shirt.

.   .   .

On the basis of some archival documents she tried to piece together the Weér family tree so I could give my mother for Christmas something she'd be happy to receive, though it's hard to predict what will make a deranged soul happy. Even in the old days, only Judit knew what would please our mother.

“Give her your pictures,” she said, knowing that sometimes I painted, though nothing more than postcard-size pictures, which I did with anything that came to hand, even with my mother's lipstick or fingernail polish. Occasionally, I'd lay the paint on so thick the picture looked like a relief. Of course, I didn't mean it to be like that, but I couldn't draw too well, so I
had to keep repainting the whole thing until it looked close to what I had intended; and then I fixed the whole thing with hair spray. I liked these pictures, though the titles were more important.
Fleeing Heraldic Animal, Young Experience-Processor, If There Is a God, Who Needs Me?, Man Carrying His Own Animal
; these were the kind of titles I gave my paintings.

“Perfume she can buy for herself. Give her your pictures,” she said.

“I'd ruin our Christmas,” I said.

“You're wrong. She'd love them.”

“That you like them is a whole different thing.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I'm not afraid. But she wouldn't be pleased.”

“It's time you get to know your mother. Do it for me,” she said, and then she bought an album and we picked out the pictures together; we gave it the title,
Defective Parents and Defective Babies
, because she also thought this to be most appropriate.

As if a whole forest had come into the city, as sightseers, the trees stood under the Fabulon billboard on Kálvin Square, in the slush, and the seller was swearing, why in the name of God's prick don't people buy their trees in time; he still had to get home to Bicske. An old woman said people didn't because the trees were cheaper today. All you had to do was sell them yesterday at one hundred per meter, and then you wouldn't have to be swearing today, pardon me young man, like a truck driver. But you know, in '44, when we spent Christmas in the cellars, even then nobody had the gall to ask the price of three sacks of potatoes for a pine-tree branch; little Frici Berek simply said he'd collect the price next Christmas, if we were still alive, and wished us Merry Christmas. That's how it was
then
. And the seller said that Berek was a real idiot, now please shuffle home, lady, your
cake will burn in the oven, and then he put against the measuring pole the tree I had picked.

“Two-sixty,” he said.

“Two and a half meters,” I said.

“Plus a tenner for the string,” he said.

“Don't tie it then,” I said, and by the time I got home, I was covered with fallen twigs. While Judit was picking the pine needles out of my hair, I asked her to come up with something else before evening, because our mother would probably have a fit at the sight of my drawings. I wouldn't want her to grab her fur coat and leave because of the foul emissions of my brain. But Judit said you really don't know our mother; as for the foul emissions of your brain, I'd give a Stradivarius for them. Then with our small axe, I whittled the bottom of the pine's trunk to make it fit into its base, and when we lit the candles and our mother took the wrapped package into her hand, I felt as nauseated as if I had eaten maggot-infested meat. I would have liked to topple the Christmas tree, so that while the two of them were busy putting out the fire and saving the curtains, I could make this filth disappear, because this was nothing but filth; and if I am already expending this much energy, why don't I spit right into her face?

“This is fascinating! I didn't know you were so good with your hands, son. And these titles; they are brilliant. I'll see to it you'd be admitted to the School of the Arts,” she said and I, instead of feeling relieved, suddenly thought I would strangle her. That I would shove down her throat all twenty-four pictures, one by one, and all the eyeliners and mascara; that I'd throw the Holló drawing ink into her face, and through her vagina I'd stuff the hair-coloring bottle into her heart. The fish knife was shaking in my hand.

“I'm glad you like them, Mother,” I said, and a fishbone got stuck in my throat. Retching, I ran to the bathroom. Judit came after me, slapped my back and when I managed to spit out what I had in my mouth, she looked in my eyes, satisfied.

“See, I was right, wasn't I?” she said.

.   .   .

We suffered through the concert of the Chinese violin virtuoso who, with his Eastern warrior's demeanor and perspiring temples, like a typhoon swept across the world between thirty and forty degrees latitude, and whose music left not a pair of eyes dry between Peking and Paris – to quote with approximate accuracy the posters and TV cultural reports. Indeed, the entire Academy of Music had goose pimples. I have seen an organ player like this: he made menopausal women cry, for they perceived his soul to be so great that not even ten thousand organ pipes could fill it. Similarly, the four strings of the violin were not enough for this Chinese virtuoso, so he slyly snapped one of them, because three is more than four, nay, that's almost like shaking hands with the devil, and the old ladies applauded wildly. When he had to change bows and he was just standing there waiting for and gauging his effect on the audience, I felt like leaving, but I had trained myself never to get up alone in the theater or the concert hall. To be more precise, only in the concert hall, because for more than ten years I hadn't been to the theater, about which a woman once remarked that it must be some kind of affectation, to which I responded that yes, it was, but it was a damn good one, and we never screwed again. In short, Eszter and I suffered through the Chinaman and the long line at the cloakroom to get our coats back, and then, in the December slush we made our way to Népköztársaság Road to find a beer hall with a human face. Soon, we
began to suspect that we had reached and were actually on Andrássy Road, but we didn't become too self-confident because until they had finished picking up the parquet floors, stuffing their anti-personnel land mines full of paprika from Szeged, and transferring the ammunition to school children, anything could happen.

“Even when she was only ten, Judit knew more about music,” I said.

“I know,” Eszter said.

“How do you know? You've never heard her play.”

“Because she's your sister.”

“You're biased.”

“I am.”

“How biased?” I asked.

“A bit more than that.”

“And tomorrow too?”

“Keep hoping. But only if I get a present.”

“You won't get any. I think not. But, I think the full moon is being gift-wrapped right now. It's cloudy so you won't notice it.”

“I don't want the full moon.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wanes.”

“Leave that to me.”

“I still don't want it. It would take up the whole room and we'd have to move into the small room. I want something that fits in the small room.”

“Don't even think about that. Nothing fits into the small room.”

“Yes, there are things that would.”

“Name one.”

“A baby.”

I lit a cigarette and then fiddled with the match so I wouldn't have to look into her eyes.

“Anyway, it's not proper to talk about a present in advance.”

“I'd like to have a baby with you.”

“You know you can't yet.”

“Yes, I can. There's nothing wrong with me anymore.”

“According to the doctor you still have to wait.”

“He said that two years ago.”

“Yes, but two years is not such a long time.”

“Why don't you admit that you're afraid of a child?”

“Because that is simply not true.”

“What then?”

“I am afraid for you. I wouldn't like to see you in the hospital again.”

“Put down those matches.”

“I know you are afraid of hospitals more than anything else.”

“Right now I am more afraid of you.”

“Come on, all I said was I was afraid for you. A regular routine test can make you look as white as a sheet for days.”

“You usually have better similes.”

“Why are you so cynical? What's wrong with my worrying about you?”

“I've never in my life been cynical. All I said was that usually you have better similes than as white as a sheet, thank God.”

“We have never talked to each other like this before,” I said.

“Because you have never lied to my face before.”

Silence.

“Don't be angry,” she said. “Would you get me another beer?”

“Of course, but let's not fight. It's terrible.”

“I would love it.”

“I would not,” I said.

“At least now you are honest. Is it hard?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Nothing would have to change. Or almost nothing.”

“You're wrong. Everything would change.”

“All I want is a child. I don't want you to move in with me.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then why are you so frightened?”

“I don't want any more Weérs,” I said.

“That's foolishness. The baby wouldn't be just a Weér. You are not pure Weér either,” she said, and the smoke froze in my lungs.

“Stop it! I don't want any more Weérs, and that's that!”

“I understand. Stop screaming.”

“You don't understand! From nobody, never! Neither a pure one nor a muddy one! D'you understand?!”

“Yes. I understand,” she said quietly.

.   .   .

And the next day she received a full moon, and she was very happy. We found the craters named after Hungarians, the place where the Apollo landed, where Tranquility Base was, and then the moon-globe rolled off her belly and closed thighs, sailed around the clothes strewn on the rug, the two glasses and the plate with cookies on it, shoved aside a tangerine to avoid the two-hundred-year-old chessboard I received instead of a Baby Jesus, and then, among the rustling wrapping papers, it rolled back
under the candle-stars of the Christmas tree. But neither she nor I reached weightlessness; the bed of Mare Tranquillitatis filled up with earthly perspiration, and then we were silent.