Temptation

  I went to the toilets and washed the blood off. As I was wiping my face before the sink, I suddenly saw my position completely clearly. Yes, the Deputy did not want to see me to whisper sweet nothings, and the Major would certainly not be on my side. Either way, then, my time here was up; but instead of getting downhearted, I felt strangely relieved. At least I had nothing left to lose. I was free as a bird, and could shit on whoever I wanted. I was almost glad that things had turned out this way. Come what may, I told myself, one thing’s for certain: I’m going to give old Top-hat his comeuppance!

  I could see in the mirror that my face was frighteningly pale. I pinched it till it reddened out and then I drew myself up straight, pressed my chin unconsciously down onto my neck, the way I had done when I was a child, and headed out of the toilets.

  It felt like everyone was watching me, and the only thing I cared about any more was my rep. I walked slowly, with loping peasant steps, like on those old summer nights walking home from the fields with the adults after a long day’s harvest. I could hear our tune, and it now rang in my ears like a battle song:

  I’m every bit as tough as you

  I can make order just like you

  “Stop humming!” the head waiter hissed in my ear. “You really that cheerful?”

  “Never been happier!” I replied impertinently and entered the bar.

  I didn’t pick up my pace even there, but merely lifted my head higher as I approached him.

  I’m every bit as tough as you

  I can make order just like you

  I stopped in front of their table. I stood to attention because it had been beaten into us peasant children that you stood to attention when talking to your social superiors so hard that you stood to attention whether you wanted to or not.

  “At your service,” I said slowly, stretching out the syllables like an old peasant, and looked the Deputy right in the eye.

  The Deputy was stirring his drink and said nothing for the moment. The alcohol was really showing on his face. His eyes were distracted, his face buttery and swollen. As if he’d been fished out of the river, I thought. Like a corpse from a river.

  Her Excellency looked at him, and since he still wasn’t saying anything, she turned to me.

  “The Deputy is sorry he hit you, András,” she said.

  I could see that that wasn’t true, though the Deputy did in fact nod curtly. It was obvious that he was only doing it for the lady’s sake, which made me even happier. I had been expecting something so different, and now she herself had come and . . . My mouth hung open in wonder. I still don’t really know why she did it. She did have a humane streak running through her madness, I don’t deny it. Perhaps she genuinely felt sorry for me, perhaps she even liked me a little; but the “comedy” value of it, I think, excited her more. She was clearly taking pleasure in teaching the infamous wild-child a lesson, testing the limits of her influence with him. She looked at him provocatively, with an odd smile.

  “Shake on it, then,” she instructed him.

  The Deputy extended his hand the way you open your mouth at the dentist’s. I took it unsuspecting, but a moment later felt a terrible pain.

  “I hope I am not shaking your hand too hard,” he said viciously, with exaggerated politeness.

  “Not at all,” I replied. “Don’t feel a thing.”

  “Not a thing, eh?”

  An ugly, wet smile spread over the buttery yellow face and he gripped my hand even stronger.

  The pain was almost unbearable now, but I could feel the lady’s gaze on me, and I didn’t make a sound. I can still recall, there was a triple candelabrum on the wall opposite, with little red shades, and I focused rigidly on that, my teeth gritted together.

  The music fell quiet, and there was a ghostly silence in the bar. The candelabrum began to wobble before my eyes.

  “Let him go!” she instructed him.

  “No, please,” I said. “Let him continue. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “Not at all?”

  The Deputy gave a short laugh and squeezed my hand even harder.

  “Not at all,” I repeated stubbornly.

  My hand hurt so much by now that these subtle differences of degree really didn’t count at all any more. Anger and hatred made me almost numb to pain. I turned away from the trembling candelabrum and looked him square in the face. His face was now like a slab of butter sweating in the heat. His forehead had big beads of sweat on it, his veins were protruding, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  In the end, he couldn’t keep it up; he let me go.

  “What kind of hand is that?” he asked, shaking his head, and tried to smile.

  I looked him in the eyes and said, hard and loud:

  “A peasant hand, sir.”

  I could feel the lady watching me, and I stole a glance at her. Her gaze was now almost palpable and I felt it on me like a hand, a caressing hand. She smiled at me. Then she said to the Deputy:

  “Now let András squeeze your hand.”

  “Mine?” He smiled in a superior way and extended it. “Oh, he can squeeze it till the cows come home!”

  I looked at his hand. He had a nice hand, with long fingers—a fine, white, gentleman’s hand.

  “Well, come on,” he goaded, and I took it.

  I hesitated a moment and then squeezed it so hard my own hand hurt. The Deputy’s face twisted.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked provocatively.

  “Not a bit,” he said, gesturing dismissively with his other hand and giving me a tough look. “Go ahead, my boy, squeeze it harder if you can.”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. I gave it everything I had. All the anger I had inside of me, and Lord knows there was plenty of that, I squeezed into that fine, white murderous hand.

  The drunken population of the bar looked on in suspense. They sat around their tables as still as waxwork figures in a museum. The head waiter, who was standing a few tables over, gestured angrily for me to stop, but I didn’t stop, I wasn’t going to stop; I just kept squeezing as hard as I could. The hell with you, I swore silently. Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

  The Deputy was still trying to smile, but the smile on his face, distorted with pain, was like the grin of a death’s head. I looked at him and suddenly saw a different face, the face of the mad, dishevelled peasant woman in the village we all called Mad Wilma. Wilma had turned into Mad Wilma when the Deputy buried her husband alive right before her eyes.

  I don’t know exactly what I did at that moment—all I remember is that the Deputy suddenly made a sort of creaking sound and snatched his hand away.

  There was still silence, a deadly silence. I was standing to attention, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “All right, András,” I heard the lady say. “You can go now.”

  I looked at her. I had never seen her eyes this way. I didn’t know what exactly it was that was in them, because you can’t yet read a woman’s eyes at sixteen, but whatever it was made me drunker—without a drop of alcohol—than the whole drunken company in the bar. I clicked my heels together crisply and said:

  “Very good, ma’am. Good evening.”

  Now all eyes really were on me, but I didn’t look back at anyone. I left the way I’d come in, with slow, unhurried peasant strides, though in my joy, I would have liked to cartwheel all the way.

  I’m every bit as tough as you

  I can make order just like you

  When I left the bar, the head waiter caught my arm and dragged me furiously towards the kitchen.

  “If he calls for the kid again,” he whispered to one of the waiters, “tell him he’s gone home.”

  With that, he tore open the kitchen door and shoved me roughly in.

  “I’ll see to you later,” he growled, and slammed the door behind me.

  In the kitchen, everyone was already up to speed with the “incident”. Iluci examined my hand anxiously—you could still see the signs of the struggle.

  “
Did it hurt?”

  “Yeah, him!” I replied drily, and said no more about it.

  The waiters also quizzed me, but I didn’t say much more to them, either. The truth is, it would have been good to talk about it, even boast a little, but I was a peasant lad and knew that that sort of thing wasn’t on, and what’s more wasn’t advisable, either. If you do something praiseworthy, people will praise you for it, and if they don’t, it’s no use praising yourself. But I lit a cigarette, which I would not otherwise have dared to do, and the waiters didn’t say a word. That was the best acknowledgement they could have given me: they saw me as a grownup, entitled to a smoke.

  Iluci put a big plate of food in front of me. It was full of the choicest cuts, and I wolfed it down hungrily, then had a glass of champagne and leant comfortably back in my chair. Life’s good, I thought. They may very well fire me now, but . . . I had another glass of champagne and stopped thinking about it. Let someone else worry for a change!

  Then I heard the head waiter’s voice.

  “Closing time,” he said.

  He stood there as if he’d appeared from thin air—I hadn’t noticed him come in. The champagne seemed to be bubbling inside my head, tickling my thoughts. So they’ve gone home, I noted slightly tipsily. She’d be getting naked about now.

  The waiters put down their cards and started getting their things together. The head waiter looked at me ominously and I could see that he was just waiting to get me alone. Old fool! I thought. You think I’m scared of you?

  The telephone rang. Iluci picked it up.

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” she said. “A bottle of the usual. Yes. Who?” Her face changed suddenly. “Who, m’lady?” she repeated. “Yes, he’s still here. As you wish, m’lady.”

  She replaced the receiver and looked anxiously at the head waiter.

  “She says András is to take it up. What else do they want from this kid?”

  “You didn’t tell her he’s still here, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, for . . .” the head waiter swore, and lit up nervously. “Well, it’s done now,” he said with a shrug after a while and looked at me. “Take the champagne up. Then . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he wanted to. “And then you can go home.”

  Then, without looking at me again, he quickly left.

  Iluci was very agitated.

  “You be careful!” she said with genuine concern. “You know who you’re dealing with.”

  “I do,” I shrugged. “I’m tough as boots, you don’t have to worry about me.”

  Inside, though, I was far less self-assured. Of course, I thought to myself, the Deputy was never going to leave it at that. Now he’ll have a far easier time of it. The hotel was asleep and there was no one but them in her quarters.

  Iluci handed me a bottle of chilled champagne in a glass bucket and a silver tray with four glasses. It was French champagne in a big, heavy bottle. If he tries anything, I thought in the lift, I’ll bash his brains in with it.

  It must have been around three. The glasses clinked eerily in the dead, reverberating corridor as I made my way to her rooms. It was so quiet you could even hear my footsteps on the thick carpet. The great lift shaft yawned darkly behind its grille, the greasy cables hanging limply in the depths. Nothing was moving, the air itself seemed stilled. Yes, the hotel was asleep.

  I stopped in front of the familiar door and knocked.

  “András?” I heard her say.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Come in.”

  I was expecting to find a drunk, boisterous company inside, but the suite was so quiet, it seemed they’d all already gone to sleep. The silence almost struck me like a gust of wind when I entered. The entrance hall was dark, the doors wide open. I stopped, looked around. Inside, a greenish obscurity reigned, like in a thriller. In the depths of the room, in the tall Venetian mirror, I saw only myself and the furnishings. What is all this? I wondered. Where are they? I listened keenly, but could hear only the clinking of the glasses on the tray. In the mirror, I could see how pale I was.

  I finally entered.

  She was lying on the chaise longue, smoking. She was alone. A single low, green-shaded standing lamp illuminated the room, the wind blew in through the open balcony door, the curtains billowed in the semi-darkness. There was something theatrical and unreal about the whole thing. She was lying there so still it was as if she were smoking in her sleep. Her arm hung down like a catatonic’s. Her heavy, painted blue eyelids half covered her eyes. She looked at me but said nothing. I stopped, clumsily, awkwardly, not knowing what to do. What was with her? Was she drunk? Or ill?

  “I’ve brought the champagne,” I practically whispered, as if she couldn’t see for herself.

  “Put it down there,” she said at last, slowly and pensively, like someone who wasn’t going to rush such a critical decision, pointing to the occasional table beside the chaise longue. She sounded like she had a swollen tongue, and her voice was a little hoarse from the alcohol. “Go ahead and pour,” she added, knocking the ash from her cigarette onto the carpet like a somnambulist.

  Outside, it was still raining. The windows occasionally rattled with the wind, as if someone were tapping on them softly, as if the night itself wanted to come inside, into her room. I opened the bottle and started pouring mechanically. When I put the neck of the bottle over the third glass, she said:

  “Only two glasses.”

  My heart was in my mouth. So they’re alone, I thought, and glanced automatically towards the bedroom. Its door was closed.

  “Sit down,” she said softly, hoarsely, and drew her mouth out slightly like someone trying to smile, forced to acknowledge that they won’t succeed for lack of strength, and giving up on the whole thing.

  I sat down on the edge of an armchair and waited anxiously to see what would happen next.

  “Drink,” she said, leaning forward unsteadily, as if still sleeping, for a glass.

  I still had one eye on the bedroom. What was going on?

  “To . . . to Your Excellency’s health!” I stuttered, and in my embarrassment drained the glass in a single go.

  She sipped her glass for a long while, thoughtfully, seriously, like a sommelier, watching me through her glass the entire time. She looked at me sleepily but curiously, the way you look out at a strange new landscape from a train window at night, your eyes heavy with sleep.

  “You’re not sitting comfortably,” she said. Her voice was now strangely gentle and yet, in some indefinable way, still commanding. “I want you to enjoy yourself,” she added, pointing at the table. “There’s cigarettes there.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, shifting slightly farther into the chair, but not touching the cigarettes.

  Silence fell. It was still stiflingly hot. The air was so humid, it felt like there was hot water falling from the sky, not rain, and even the wind brought no relief. That, too, was hot and unnerving, like the breath of a woman aroused.

  I kept waiting for the door to open.

  The silent room was now full of noises. The curtains rustled in the wind, whispering together, something buzzed or rattled somewhere, you couldn’t tell what, and sometimes, it seemed that the noises were coming from the bedroom.

  “Why do you keep looking at the door?” she asked suddenly.

  “I wasn’t,” I replied lamely and felt myself blush.

  She leant forward, removed a cigarette from the box with two fingers, and put it between my lips.

  “Go ahead and smoke,” she said and flashed a curious smile. “We’re alone.”

  The match trembled in my hand as I lit up, the blood rushed to my head. We’re alone. I was alone with her.

  I stole an unconscious glance at her, but she didn’t say anything. She lay, immobile, on the chaise longue and looked at me like a strange landscape. She now seemed so alien it was as if she weren’t the woman I knew at all. It was as if she merely reminded me of someone, another woman, another woman who w
as her, and yet not her, the way a portrait reminded you of a model the artist hadn’t painted from life. Had I seen her like this in my dream? Or in the dark, with Manci? I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. There was something now in her face, in her whole being, that I had only vaguely suspected before. Something had taken on a physical reality that before had been invisible and impossible to define, like when the salt crystallizes from seawater, and water becomes solid and acquires volume and weight: a palpable body. She was so beautiful I wanted to scream or cry, or jump all over her to bite and strangle her, or to die right then, there, at her feet. I’m drunk, I thought. And then I thought once more: to die right there, at her feet!

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “I’m turning seventeen.”

  “Seventeen!” she repeated pensively, and nodded like a doctor who’s made a full diagnosis of the symptoms and knows that the patient’s condition is serious, but won’t say anything till later to the family. “Drink,” she said, almost consolingly, like someone who’s tried the cure themselves and knows it will work.

  I poured and we drank. She looked at me through her glass again, seriously, attentively, with an almost professional eye, as if she really were a doctor sedating a patient, making sure not to begin the operation until their stupor had reached the necessary point.

  I didn’t dare look at her, I stared out of the open balcony door. The Danube glinted blackly in the humid night and in the rain it looked as if it were bubbling like hot tar. The whole world seemed to be like that: dark, foggy, about to boil over.

  “Are you looking at the stars?” she asked.

  I thought she was joking. I smiled.

  “There are no stars tonight,” I said a little haltingly, because by this time my own tongue felt a little swollen.

  She leant forward a little; her face was mysterious.

  “Oh, there are,” she said softly, confidentially, like someone imparting news of a great discovery. “The stars are always in the sky, only we can’t see them for the clouds.” She thought about that for a little while, and then nodded slowly but very firmly. You could see that she’d thought it over and had once and for all approved her statement. “The sky is full of stars,” she said, “only people can’t see them.” That made her sad. She sighed. “I’ve had a lot to drink,” she noted. “Pour.”