VI.
The Work of the Spider II
The Devil’s Tit, Satantango
What is behind me still remains ahead of me. Can’t a man rest?” Futaki said to himself in a low mood, when, treading soft as a cat, leaning on his stick, he caught up with the stubbornly silent Schmidt, and the now silent, now howling Mrs. Schmidt at the “personal table” to the right of the counter, and dropped heavily into the chair, letting the woman’s words slip by him (“As far as I can see you must be drunk! I think, it’s gone to my own head a little, I shouldn’t mix my drinks like that, but . . . But you’re such a gentleman . . .”) as he grabbed the new bottle and slid it to the middle of the table with a foolish look on his face, wondering why he should feel so glum all of a sudden, because, really, there was absolutely no reason to be so gloomy, after all, today wasn’t just any old day, because he knew the landlord would be proved to be right and that “they had only a few short hours to wait” for Irimiás and Petrina to arrive and that their arrival would put an end to years of “wretched misery,” break the damp silence, and stop that infernal funereal bell, the one that wouldn’t let people rest in bed in the early morning, so they had to stand there helplessly, dripping with sweat while everything slowly fell to pieces. Schmidt who had refused to say a word ever since they set foot in the bar (and would only mumble, turning his back on “the whole damn thing” in the great din when Kráner and Mrs. Schmidt shared out the money) now raised his head, laid furiously into his wife as she swayed precariously on the edge of her chair (“It’s all gone to your head, not to mention your ass! . . . You’re drunk as a newt”) then turned to Futaki who was just about to fill their glasses. “Don’t give her any more, damn it! Can’t you see the state she’s in?!” Futaki didn’t answer or try to make any excuses, he simply gestured that he totally agreed with him, and quickly put the bottle down again. He had spent hours trying to explain it to Schmidt, but the man just shook his head: according to him, “they’d had their one chance and had blown it” by sitting here in the bar, like “gutless sheep” instead of using the confusion created by Irimiás and Petrina to quietly make off with the money and, better still, “Kráner might have been left here to rot . . .” However Futaki went on about how, from tomorrow on, everything would be different, that Schmidt should just calm down, because they’d really struck it lucky this time, Schmidt simply made a mocking face and kept quiet, and so it all went on until Futaki realized that they could never see eye to eye since while his old chum might be willing to accept that Irimiás was “a real opportunity,” he would not agree that there was no other option: without him (and without Petrina too, of course) they’d just be stumbling about like the blind, without a clue, ranting on, fighting each other, “like condemned horses at the slaughterhouse.” Somewhere deep inside him he did — of course — understand Schmidt’s resistance, since they had spent years cursed with bad luck, though he thought the sheer hope that Irimiás would look after things and that everything would improve as a result might mean that they could finally “make it all work” because Irimiás was the only man capable of “holding together things that just fall apart when we’re in charge.” What would it matter then that an indeterminate sum of money had gone up in smoke? At least they need not feel so bitter about things, watching helplessly, day after day, the plaster falling off the walls, the walls cracking, the roofs sagging; nor would they have to put up with the ever slower beating of their hearts and the growing numbness of their limbs. Because Futaki was certain that neither this week-on-week, month-on-month cycle of failure in which the same but increasingly confused schemes suddenly and inevitably crumbled into ash, nor the ever fainter longing for freedom, constituted a real danger: on the contrary, these were the forces that held them together, because bad luck and utter annihilation were far from the same thing, but right now, in this most recent state of affairs, failure was out of the question. It was as if the real threat came from elsewhere, from somewhere beneath their feet, though its source was bound to be uncertain: a man will suddenly find silence frightening, he fears to move, he squats in a corner that he hopes might protect him: even chewing becomes a torture there and swallowing agony, so eventually he doesn’t even notice that everything around him has slowed, that he is ever more hemmed in, and then discovers that his strategic withdrawal is in fact nothing less than petrification. Futaki glanced around in fright, lit a cigarette, his hands trembling, and greedily drank up what was in his glass. “I shouldn’t be drinking,” he berated himself. “Every time I do I can’t help thinking of coffins.” He stretched out his legs, leaned comfortably back in his chair, and decided to indulge in no more fearful thoughts; he closed his eyes and let the warmth, the wine and noise radiate his bones. And the ridiculous panic that had seized hold of him one moment was gone the next: now he was listening only to the cheerful banter round him and was so moved he could barely hold back a tear because his earlier anxiety had been succeeded by gratitude for the privilege of being able, after all his sufferings, to sit in this hubbub, excited and optimistic, safe from everything he had just had to confront. If, having consumed eight and a half glasses, he had had enough strength left, he would have hugged each of his sweating, gesticulating companions if only because he couldn’t resist the desire to give formal shape to this profound emotion. The trouble was he had unexpectedly developed a violent headache, felt suddenly hot, his stomach was heaving and his brow was covered in sweat. He sank back into himself, quite weak, and tried to alleviate his condition by breathing deeply, so he never even heard the words of Mrs. Schmidt (“What’s with you? Gone deaf or something? Hey, Futaki, you feeling sick?”) who, seeing Futaki massaging his stomach, his face pale and clearly suffering, just waved (“Ah well. Someone else you shouldn’t count on! . . .”) and turned to face the landlord who had long been staring at her with the most lustful expression. “This heat is unbearable! János, do something for heaven’s sake!” But it was as if he hadn’t heard her “in this hellish din’: he simply spread his hands, and without responding to Mrs. Schmidt and her nonsense about the heater, gave her a deeply meaningful nod. Having realized that her efforts had been in vain, the woman sat angrily down and unbuttoned the top button of her lemon-yellow blouse, to the gratification of the landlord who regarded her with pleasure, delighted his patient work had borne the desired fruit. For hours now, secretly, and with commendable diligence, he had been turning up the fire, and finally, with one quick movement, he had raised and slid aside the oil-heater’s control — who, after all, would have noticed that in all the hubbub? — so that Mrs. Schmidt might be “liberated” from, first, her coat and then her cardigan, her charms acting on him with even greater power than before. For some unaccountable reason she had always rejected his advances, his every effort — though he never ever gave up — meeting with failure, and the agonies he suffered through her rejections increased each time. But he was patient and waited, and continued waiting, because he knew from the first time he surprised Mrs. Schmidt at the mill, in the arms of a young tractor-driver — when instead of leaping to her feet and running away in shame, she just carried on, letting him stand there, his throat dry, until the young man finally brought her to a climax — that it would take a long-term campaign to win her. However, ever since it had come to his attention a few days ago, that the bonds between Futaki and Mrs. Schmidt had, so to speak, “loosened,” he was hardly able to conceal his delight because he felt it was his turn now, that this was his opportunity once and for all. Now, weakening at the sight of Mrs. Schmidt delicately pinching the blouse about her breasts and using the garment to fan herself, his hands began to shake uncontrollably and his eyes all but misted over. “Those shoulders! Those two sweet little thighs rubbing against each other! Those hips. And those tits, dear lord!. . . .” His eyes wanted to seize the Entirety at once, but in his excitement he could only concentrate on the “maddening sequence” of the Details. The blood drained from his face, he felt dizzy: he was practically begging to catc
h Mrs. Schmidt’s indifferent (“It’s like he’s some kind of simpleton . . .”) eyes and, since he was incapable of freeing himself from the illusion that he could sum up every situation in life, from the simplest to the most complex, in one pithy phrase, he asked himself, “Wouldn’t any man spare the oil for a woman like this?” It was all one happy dream. Ah, but if he had known how hopeless it was, how unsuited he was to her desires, he would anxiously have retreated to the store room once again to nurse his fresh wounds, protected there from the hostile looks of others, and escape the gleeful mocking he would have had to face. Because he couldn’t even begin to guess that what he took for the come-on looks of Mrs. Schmidt, apparently aimed at Kráner, Halics, the headmaster, and he himself, and the way she led them into this dangerous whirlplool of desire with her languorously extended limbs, was only her way of filling the time while every inch of her imagination was given over to Irimiás, her memories of him beating at “the grassy cliffs of her consciousness like a roaring sea in a storm” that, combined with exciting visions of their future life together, served to intensify her hatred and loathing of the world around her, a world to which “she must soon bid adieu.” And if, now and then, it happened that she swayed her hips or allowed greedy eyes to feast on the sight of her notable bosom, it was not just to make the remaining, highly tedious hours fly faster, but because it was preparation for the much longed for meeting with Irimiás, at which point their two hearts “might be conjoined in recollected pleasures.” Kráner and Halics (and even the headmaster) — unlike the landlord — were perfectly clear there was no hope for them: their arrows of desire dropped at Mrs. Schmidt’s feet with a hollow sound, but this way, at least, they could remain resigned to the pointlessness of their desire: the desire, at least, would survive without its object. The bald, thin, tall (“but sinewy . . .”) figure of the headmaster, with his disproportionately small head, sat, resentfully, by his glass of wine, behind Kerekes, in the corner. It was pure chance he had heard of the prospective arrival of Irimiás, he, the only educated man in the district! except, that is, for the perpetually drunk doctor. Who do these people think they are? What do they think they’re up to? If he hadn’t eventually had enough of Schmidt and Kráner’s ridiculous unpunctuality and closed up the Culture Center, having placed the projector, as he was bound to in writing, in a secure place, and decided to “catch up with the news” at the bar, he might never have heard about the return of Irimiás and Petrina . . . And what would these people do without him? Who would protect their interests? Did they think he’d accept whatever Irimiás was likely to propose, just as it was, no questions asked? Who else was likely to put himself forward as the leader of such a rabble? Someone had to grasp the nettle, to prepare a plan and organize “all the necessaries” into a proper list! As his first fit of rage passed (“These people are hopeless! What to do? Surely we must be methodical about this, we can’t leave everything from one day to the next . . .”) his attention was divided between Mrs. Schmidt and the detailed working out of such a plan, but he quickly dropped the latter because he was firmly of the opinion, based on long years of experience, that “at any given time one should concentrate only on one given thing.” He was convinced that this woman was different from the others. It could be no accident that she had rejected the crude, animal advances of the other locals, one after the other. Mrs. Schmidt, he felt, needed “a serious man, a man of some substance” not someone of Schmidt’s kind, Schmidt, whose coarse character was not in the least fitted to her thoughtful, simple, yet refined soul. And, “in the last analysis,” it was no wonder that the woman was attracted to him — there could be no question that she was — it was enough to know that she was the only one on the estate who had never tried to make fun of him, not even that time the school was closed down, and that she had continued to address him as “headmaster.” And that must be because the way this woman behaved towards him — quite apart from the issue of attraction, that is to say with clear and obvious respect — showed that she knew he was just waiting for the right moment (which would be when the right people, proper first-rate figures in both human and professional terms, reassumed the official positions they had relinquished to make room for that vulgar horde of clowns in what could only be a strategic, temporary retreat) to renovate the building and “energetically to set about” teaching again. Mrs. Schmidt, of course — why deny it? — was a very good looking woman; the photographs he had of her (he’d taken them years ago on a cheap, but all the more reliable, camera) were far superior, in his opinion, to the “highly provocative” kind he saw in Füles, the games and puzzles magazine, with which he tried to chase away those sleepless, endless nights filled with anxiety. . . . But, possibly as a result of the generally recognized effect of yet another emptied bottle of wine, his normally clear, methodical, organized thoughts suddenly failed him: his stomach began to heave, the “veins” in his head started pounding, and he was almost ready to leap to his feet, ignoring the babblings of these primitive “peasants,” and invite the woman to his table, when his excited gaze, roving here and there over the hidden promise of Mrs. Schmidt’s body, suddenly met her own apparently indifferent eyes across the snoring figure of Kerekes slumped over the billiards table, and the shock of her utter indifference seemed to cut right through him, brought a blush to his face and led him to retreat behind the farmer’s vast bulk so that he might be “alone with his shame” or at least to give up the idea, for an hour or so, much like Halics who — having seen that Mrs. Schmidt, though sitting opposite him, had not heard him, or, if she had heard him, simply didn’t want to hear his gripping account of long familiar events — abruptly stopped in mid-sentence and let Kráner carry on shouting and quarrelling with the ever more furious driver, but — “excuse me!” — without him, for he wasn’t going to get himself into a stew about it, and, having resolved this, he swept the cobwebs off his clothes and glared in frustration at the greasy, self-satisfied mug of the landlord as he made eyes at Mrs. Schmidt, because — after considerable thought — he had concluded that, since “shits like him had no place in the world” the profusion of cobwebs must be a new kind of ruse, part of the landlord’s guile. What an utter scoundrel the man was! It wasn’t enough for him to be constantly annoying people with his childish nonsense, now he had to make eyes at Mrs. Schmidt too. Because this woman was his alone . . . or would be soon because even a blind man could see that she’d smiled at him at least twice, and he had, after all, smiled back! . . . Given all this — for it was plain to see, especially with eyes as sharp as his were generally acknowledged to be — that there was no limit to the depths to which this brigand, this shameless exploiter, this disgraceful conman, was prepared to stoop! . . . The man was loaded with money, his storeroom was packed to the rafters with wine, brandy and food, never mind what was in the bar itself, not to mention the car outside, and yet he wanted more! And more, and more. The man was insatiable! And now he had to be drooling over Mrs. Schmidt too! This time he’s gone too far! Halics was made of sterner stuff: he was not going put up with such impertinence! Everyone thinks he’s just some timid little mouse, but that’s just appearances, the outer man. Well, let them bring on Irimiás and Petrina! The inner man was capable of things they could never dream of! He threw back his wine, squinted over at his stony, all-observing wife and reached for a quick refill but, to his greatest surprise — he distinctly remembered there being at least two glassfuls remaining — the bottle was empty. “Someone’s stolen my wine!” he cried and leapt to his feet, glaring, but, not meeting with a single pair of startled, guilty eyes, he grumbled and sat back in his chair. The tobacco smoke was so dense now you could barely see through it: the oil heater pumped out heat, its top glowing bright red, so everyone was pouring with sweat. The noise grew louder and louder because the loudest people, Kráner, Kelemen, Mrs. Kráner, and when she had recovered her strength, Mrs. Schmidt, all tried to shout over the racket and now, on top of it all, Kerekes had woken up and was demanding another bottle fr
om the landlord. “That’s what you think, pal!” Kráner stumbled forward. Glass in hand he was waving his arms about right under Kelemen’s nose, the veins on his forehead standing out, his cataract-grey eyes glittering with menace. “I’m not your “pal,’ ” the driver leapt to his feet, having completely lost his temper. “I’ve never been anyone’s “pal,” understand?!” The landlord tried to calm them from behind his counter (“Just leave it, will you? Your noise is enough to give a man a splitting headache!”) but Kelemen skirted round Futaki’s table and ran over to the counter. “Well, you tell him then! Someone’s got to tell him!” The landlord picked his nose. “Tell him what? Can’t you just forget it, can’t you see he’s upsetting everyone!” But instead of calming down Kelemen grew angrier still. “So you don’t get it either! Are you all stupid?!” he bellowed, and started beating his fists on the counter. “When I . . . yes, I . . . got friendly with Irimiás . . . near Novosibirsk . . . in the prisoner-of-war camp, there was no Petrina then! Understand?! Petrina was nowhere!” “What do you mean nowhere? He must have been somewhere, mustn’t he?” Kelemen was practically frothing at the mouth and gave the counter a great kick. “Look if I say he was nowhere, he was nowhere. Simply . . . nowhere!” “OK, OK,” the landlord tried to pacify him: “Whatever you say; now just be nice, go back to your table and stop kicking my counter to pieces!” Kráner made a face and shouted over Futaki’s head: “Where were you?! And how did you get to be at Novosibirsk or what the fuck? Look pal, if you can’t hold your liquor, stop drinking!” Kelemen stared at the landlord, with an agonized expression, then turned to Kráner, and having shaken his head to convey the right mixture of fury and bitterness, flapped his hand in a rather grand way at the extraordinary ignorance of the man . . . He swayed back to his table and tried to calm himself by sitting in a comfortable position but miscalculated, upset the chair and, dragging it with him, ended up sprawling on the floor. This was too much for Kráner who burst out laughing. “What’s the matter with you. . . . You lunk. . . .You big drunk lunk?! . . . My sides are splitting! And that this . . . this. . . . he . . . he claims. . . . To have been a prisoner-of-war at. . . . No, it’s too much! . . .” His eyes bulging, his hand clutching his belly, he managed to make his way over to the Schmidts’ table, stopped behind Mrs. Schmidt and abruptly gave her a big sudden hug. “Did you hear that . . . ,” he started, his voice still choked by laughter: “This man — this man here — he has been trying to tell me . . . did you hear him?! . . .” “No I didn’t, but in any case I’m not interested!” Mrs. Schmidt snapped back, trying to free herself from Kráner’s spade-like hands. “And you can take your filthy paws off me!” Kráner let that pass and leaned against her with the full weight of his body, then — as if by mere accident — he slid his hand down Mrs. Schmidt’s open blouse. “Ooh! It’s lovely and warm in here,” he grinned but the woman, with one furious movement, freed herself, turned round and, summoning her full power, struck him a heavy blow. “You!” she bellowed at Schmidt when she saw that Kráner hadn’t stopped grinning. “You just sit there! How can you tolerate it?! His hands were all over me!?” With an enormous effort, Schmidt raised his head from the table, but this being the limits of his strength, slumped right back again. “What are you beefing about?” he muttered and started a bout of hiccupping. “Just . . . let. . . . hands . . . go wherever! At least someone is enjoying them . . . selves . . .” But by this time the landlord had sprung into action and went at Kráner like a fighting cockerel. “You think this is some kind of bordello! You think that’s what this place is! A whorehouse!?” But Kráner just stood there, more bull than rooster, not flinching, but looking at him sidelong, before suddenly brightening. “Whorehouse! That’s it precisely, pal! That’s what it is!” He put his arm round the landlord and started dragging him toward the door. “This way, pal! Let’s get out of this shitty hole! Let’s go down to the mill! Now that’s what I call life down there . . . Come on, don’t hang back! . . .” But the landlord succeeded in escaping him, and quickly skipped back behind the bar, waiting, by way of satisfaction, for the “drunken idiot” to notice at last that his statuesque wife had long been waiting by the door, hands on hips, her eyes flashing. “I can’t hear you! Go on, tell me too!” she hissed into her husband’s ear when he bumped into her. “Where do you think you’re going?! Up your mother’s ass?!” Kráner immediately sobered up. “Me?” he looked at her uncomprehendingly: “Me? Why should I be going anywhere? I’m not going anywhere because I want my one and only little darling, and no one else!” Mrs. Kráner disengaged herself from her husband’s arms and carried on, stabbing her finger at him. “I’ll give you “little darling” and no mistake, and you sober up by morning or little darling will give you a black eye you won’t forget!” Though two heads shorter than he was, she grabbed the meek-as-a-lamb Kráner’s shirtsleeve and pushed him down into the chair: “You dare stand up again without my say so, I tell you, you’ll regret it . . .” She filled her own glass, drained it in anger, looked round, gave a great sigh and turned to Mrs. Halics (“A den of vice, that’s what this is! But there’ll be tears and wailing and gnashing of teeth yet, just like the prophet says!”) who was watching events with a grim satisfaction. “Where was I?” Mrs. Kráner picked up her broken conversation, waving an admonitory finger at her husband as he carefully reached for a glass. “Oh yes! In other words my husband is a decent man, I can’t complain, and there’s the truth! It’s just the booze, you know, the booze! If it weren’t for that, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, believe you me, butter wouldn’t melt. He can be such a thoroughly good man when he wants to be! And he can work, you know, work as hard as two men! Well, so what if he has a fault or two, dear God! Who doesn’t have faults, Mr. Halics, my dear, tell me that? There’s no such man anywhere. None that walk the earth, anyway. What? He can’t stand people being rude to him? Yes, that’s the one thing he gets really sore about, my husband. That time with the doctor, that happened because, well, you know what the doctor is like, treating people like they’re his dogs! An intelligent man would let it pass, and pull himself together, because it’s only the doctor, after all, and the whole thing doesn’t amount to much, best ignore it, end of story. In any case he’s nowhere near so bad a man as he seems. I should know Mrs. Halics darling, because don’t I know him through and through, his every little foible, after all these years!?” Futaki put out a careful hand as he leaned on his stick and teetered towards the door, his hair tousled, his shirt hanging out at the back, his face white as lime. With great difficulty he removed the wedge and stepped outside, but the shock of fresh air immediately laid him on his back. The rain was beating down as hard as ever, each drop “a sure messenger of doom,” exploding against the moss-covered tiles of the bar roof, against the trunk and branches of the acacia, on the uneven glimmering surface of the metalled road above and, down below the road, on the space by the door where Futaki’s bent, shivering body sprawled in the mud. He lay there for long minutes, as if unconscious in the dark, and when he eventually managed to relax, he immediately fell asleep, so if it hadn’t occurred to the landlord, some half an hour later, to wonder where he’d got to, to find him and shake him into consciousness (“Hey! Have you gone crazy or something?! Get up! Do you want pneumonia?!”) he might have remained there till the morning. Dizzy, he leant against the wall of the bar, rejecting the landlord’s offer (“Come along, lean on me, you’ll get soaked to the bone out here, so stop it . . .”) and just stood, stupid and drained under the pitiless power of the rain, seeing but not understanding the unstable world around him until — another half hour later — he was utterly soaked and he suddenly noticed he was sober again. He nipped round the corner of the building to piss by an old bare acacia and, while doing so, looked up at the sky, feeling tiny and quite helpless — and while an endless stream of water gushed from him in powerful masculine fashion he experienced a fresh wave of melancholy. He continued gazing at the sky, examining it, thinking that somewhere — however far away — t
here must be an end to the great tent extended above them, since “it is ordained that all things must end.” “We are born into this sty of a world,” he thought, his mind still pounding, “like pigs rolling in our own muck, with no idea what all that jostling at the teats amounts to, why we’re engaged in this perpetual hoof-to-hoof combat on the path that leads to the trough, or to our beds at dusk.” He buttoned himself up and moved to one side to be directly under the rain. “Go wash my old bones,” he grumbled. “Give them a good wash, since this ancient piece of shit won’t be around much longer.” He stood there, his eyes closed, his head thrown back because he longed to be free of the obstinate, ever recurring desire to know at last, now that he was near the end the answer to the question: “What is the point of Futaki?” Because it would be best to resign himself now, to resign himself to that last moment when his body dropped into the last ditch, to drop into it with the same enthusiastic thud you expect from a baby saying hello to the world for the first time; and then he thought again of the sty and of the pigs because he felt — though it would have been hard to put the feeling into words, his mouth being so dry — that no one ever suspected that the reassuring self-evident providence that took care of us all on a daily basis would (“At one unavoidable dawn hour”) be simply the light flashing off the butcher’s knife, and that that would be at the time when we least expected it, a time when we wouldn’t even know why we should be facing that incomprehensible and terrifying last goodbye. “And there’s no escape and nothing to be done about it,” he thought as he shook his tangled locks, in ever deeper melancholy, “for who could possibly comprehend the idea that someone who, for whatever reason, would happily carry on living for ever, should be kicked off the face of the planet and spend eternity with worms in some dark, stinking marsh.” Futaki had, in his youth, been “a lover of machines” and retained that love even now when he resembled nothing so much as a small drenched bird, muddied and fouled with his own vomit; and because he knew the precision and order demanded even of the workings of a simple pump he thought that, if a functioning universal principle did exist somewhere (“as it plainly does in machines!”) then (“you can bet your life on it!”) even a world as mad as this must be subject to reason. He stood at a loss in the pouring rain then, without any warning, started furiously accusing himself. “What an idiotic blockhead you are, Futaki! First you roll about like a pig in muck, then you stand here like a lost sheep . . . Have you lost what little brain you had? And, as if you didn’t know it was the last thing you should do, you get totally smashed! On an empty stomach!” He shook his head in anger, looked himself up and down, and full of shame, started to wipe his clothes down without much success. With his trousers and shirt still covered in mud he quickly found his stick in the dark and tried to sneak back into the bar unnoticed to get some help from the landlord. “Feeling better now?” the landlord asked winking, ushering him into the storeroom. “There’s a bowl and some soap, don’t worry about it, you can use this to dry yourself with.” He stood there with arms folded and did not move until Futaki had finished washing, though he knew he could have left him alone, but had decided it was better if he stayed, because “you never know what devil gets into people.” “Brush your trousers off as best you can, and wash that shirt,” he said. “You can let it dry off on the stove! Until it’s ready you can put this on!” Futaki thanked him, wrapped the ragged and cobwebbed old coat around him, smoothed back his dripping hair and followed the landlord out of the storeroom. He didn’t go back to rejoin the Schmidts but settled instead next to the stove and spread his shirt over the back of it, asking the landlord, “Got anything to eat?” “Just some milk chocolate and these croissants,” the landlord replied. “Give me two croissants!” said Futaki, but by the time the landlord returned with the tray the heat had overcome him and he was asleep. It was late now and the only people still awake were Mrs. Kráner, the headmaster, Kerekes and Mrs. Halics (who, now that everyone was exhausted, took the liberty of raising her unsuspecting husband’s glass of Riesling to her lips), so Futaki greeted the landlord’s laden tray (“Fresh croissants, help yourself!”) with a quiet mumble of refusal and the croissants were returned untouched. “Fine, drop dead . . . Give these corpses half an hour and it’ll be resurrection time again . . . ,” the landlord muttered in fury, stretching his stiff limbs before mentally making a quick calculation as to “how things stand.” It all looked pretty hopeless because the takings fell far short of what he had originally anticipated and he could only hope that a shot of coffee would bring “the drunken rabble” to their senses. Beyond the financial loss (because, “heigh-ho,” lack of income also amounted to loss) what most annoyed him was that he had been just one step away from getting Mrs. Schmidt into the storeroom when she went out like a light and suddenly fell asleep, which forced him to think of Irimiás again (though he had decided he would not let the thought “bother him because things would take their own course”) conscious that they’d be arriving soon and then it would “all” be over. “Waiting, waiting, nothing but waiting . . . ,” he fretted, then leapt to his feet because he remembered that he had put the croissants back on the shelf without covering them in cellophane, though “these bastards” would soon be up again and he’d be dashing round with the tray for hours. He was long used to the state of perpetual readiness and had been ever since he got over his first wave of anger, just as he was no longer anxious to find the last owner of the bar, “that blasted Swabian” and tell him “there was nothing in the contract about spiders.” Back then, just two days before opening the bar, having got over his shock, he had tried every possible way of eliminating the creatures but, discovering that it was impossible, he realized there was nothing for it but to talk to the Swabian again in the hope of persuading him to drop the asking price a little. But he had vanished off the face of the earth, which was distinctly not the case with the spiders who continued “joyfully cavorting” about the place, so he was obliged to resign himself for the rest of his life to the fact there was nothing to be done about it, that he could pursue them with rags and cloths and crawl from bed in the middle of the night, but, even so, he could only deal with “the majority of them” at best. Fortunately this never became a major subject of conversation because as long as he stayed open and people shifted from place to place, the spiders couldn’t “go around wrecking the place”: even they weren’t capable in “covering anything that moved in cobwebs . . .” The trouble always started after the last customer had gone and he had locked up, washed the dirty glasses, put things away and closed the ledger, at the point when he started to clean up, because then every corner, every table and chair leg, every window, the stove, the rising rank of nooks and shelves and even the line of ashtrays on the counter would be covered in fine webs. And the situation deteriorated from there because having once finished and lain down in the storeroom, quietly cursing, he could hardly sleep because he knew that, within a few hours, he himself would not be spared. Given this, it was no wonder that he shrank, disgusted, from anything that reminded him of cobwebs, and it often happened that when he could no longer bear it he would attack the iron bars over the windows but — luckily — because he went at them with his bare hands he couldn’t really damage them. “And all this is nothing compared . . . ,” he complained to his wife. Because the scariest thing was he never once saw an actual spider though at that time he’d stay awake all night behind the counter, but it was as if they sensed his presence watching them, and they simply wouldn’t appear. Even after he had resigned himself to the situation he still hoped — just once — to set eyes on one of them. So it became a habit with him, from time to time — without ever stopping what he was otherwise doing — to cast his eyes carefully round the place, just as he was examining the corners now. Nothing. He gave a sigh, wiped the counter down, gathered together all the bottles off the tables then left the bar to relieve himself behind a tree. “Someone’s coming,” he ceremoniously announced on his return. The whole bar was immediately on it
s feet. “Somebody? What do you mean somebody?” cried Mrs. Kráner, quite pale. “Alone?” “Alone,” the landlord calmly replied. “And Petrina?” Halics spread his hands. “I told you it’s just one man. That’s all I know!” “Well then . . . it can’t be him,” Futaki determined. “Quite right, not him,” the rest muttered . . . They sat back in their places, lit cigarettes in disappointment or took a sip from their glasses and only a few glanced up when Mrs. Horgos walked into the bar but even those then turned away again partly because, while not particularly old, she looked like an ancient hag and partly because she was not much liked on the estate (“There’s nothing sacred for that woman!” Mrs. Kráner declared). Mrs. Horgos shook the rain off her coat then, without a word, strode over to the counter. “What will you have?” the landlord coldly asked. “Give me a bottle of beer. It’s hell out there,” Mrs. Horgos croaked. She looked round the bar, hard-eyed, not out of curiosity, it seemed, but as if she had arrived just in time to bear witness to a crime. Her gaze finally settled on Halics. She flashed her red toothless gums and remarked to the landlord. “They seem to be having a fine time.” Scorn radiated from her wrinkled crow’s face, the water still dripping from a coat that seemed to have gathered on her back like a hump. She raised the bottle to her mouth and greedily started drinking. The beer ran over her chin and the landlord watched in disgust as it dribbled from there onto her neck. “Have you seen my daughter?” Mrs. Horgos asked. “The little one.” “No,” the landlord gruffly replied. “She’s not been here.” The woman croaked and spat on the floor. She took a single cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and blew smoke in the landlord’s face. “You know, the thing is,” she said, “we had a bit of a party with Halics yesterday and now the shit doesn’t even have the manners to say hello. I’ve been asleep all day. I wake up this evening and there’s nobody about, not Mari, not Juli, not little Sanyi, not one of them. But never mind that. The little one has skipped off somewhere, I’ll give her a hiding she won’t forget when she turns up. You know how it is.” The landlord didn’t say anything. Mrs. Horgos drained the remainder of the bottle and immediately ordered another. “So she wasn’t here,” she muttered, grimacing. “The little whore!” The landlord curled his toes. “I’m sure she must be somewhere on the farm. She’s not the kind to run away,” he said. “Sure she is!” the woman snapped back. “Fuck her! I hope she gets what’s coming to her, the sooner the better. It’s practically dawn and she’s out in this rain. No wonder I’m so worn out I’m in bed all the time.” “And where have you left the girlies?” Kráner shouted over. “What’s that to do with you?” Mrs. Horgos spat back, full of fury. “They’re my girls!” Kráner grinned. “OK, OK, no need to bite my head off!” “I’m not biting your head off, but you just mind your own business!” It was quiet. Mrs. Horgos turned her back on the drinkers, leaned an elbow on the counter and, tipping her head back, took another great gulp. “I need it for my bad stomach. It’s the only medicine that helps at times like this.” “I know,” the landlord nodded. “Do you want some coffee?” The woman shook her head, “No, I’d be throwing up all night. What good is coffee? Useless!” She picked the bottle up again and drained it to the last drop. “Good night then. I’m off now. If you see any of them tell them to get back home and be quick about it. I’m not going to hang around all night. Not at my age!” She pushed a twenty at the landlord, put away the change and started for the door. “Tell the girlies there’s no hurry — tell them to take their time,” Kráner laughed behind her back. Mrs. Horgos muttered something and spat once on the floor by way of goodbye as the landlord opened the door for her. Halics, who was still a regular at the farm, didn’t even “spare her a glance of his beady eye” because ever since he had woken he had been staring at the empty bottle in front of him and was only concerned about discovering whether someone had been playing tricks on him. He scanned the pub with eagle eyes and settling finally on the landlord, decided to watch the man like a hawk and to expose him at the earliest opportunity for the scoundrel he was. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall to his chest because he was incapable of remaining conscious for more than a few minutes at a time before sleep overcame him. “Almost dawn,” noted Mrs. Kráner. “I have a feeling they’re not coming.” If only!” muttered the landlord, wiping his brow as he went round with a thermos full of coffee. “Don’t panic,” Kráner retorted. “They’ll come when they are good and ready.” “Of course,” added Futaki. “It won’t be long now, you’ll see.” He took slow sips of his steaming coffee, touched his drying shirt, then lit a cigarette and fell to wondering what Irimiás would do once he got here. The pumps and generators could certainly do with a complete overhaul for a start. The whole engine room needed a new coat of lime-wash and the windows and doors would have to be repaired because there was such a draught there it gave you headache all the time. It wouldn’t be easy, of course, because the buildings were in a poor state, the gardens overrun by weeds, and people had carried away anything usable from the old industrial building leaving nothing but the bare walls so it looked like a bombed site. But there is no such word as “can’t” for Irimiás! And then of course you’d need luck, because there’s no point in anything without luck! But luck comes with intelligence! And Irimiás’s mind was sharp as a razor. Even back then, Futaki recalled with a smile, when he was appointed boss of the works, it was to him everyone ran in case of trouble, the managers too, because, as Petrina said at the time, Irimiás was “an angel of hope to hopeless people with hopeless difficulties.” But there was nothing to be done with bottomless stupidity: no wonder he walked away in the end. And the moment he vanished things ran straight-downhill and the community plunged to ever lower depths. First cold and ice, then foot-and-mouth disease with piles of dead sheep, then wages a week late because there wasn’t enough money to pay them, . . . though by the time it got to that state everyone was saying it was all over, and that they’d have to shut up shop. And that’s what happened. Those who had somewhere to go cleared off as fast as they could; those who didn’t stayed behind. And so began the quarrels, the arguments, the hopeless plans where everyone knew better than anyone else what should be done, or else pretended that nothing had happened. Eventually everyone was resigned to the sense of helplessness, hoping for miracles, watching the clock with ever greater anxiety, counting the weeks and months until even time lost its importance and they sat about all day in the kitchen, getting a few pennies from here and there that they immediately drank away in the bar. Latterly he himself had got used to staying in the old engine room, only leaving it to call at the bar or round at the Schmidts’ place. Like the others, he no longer believed that anything could change. He had resigned himself to staying here for the rest of his life because there was nothing he could do about it. Could an old head like his set itself to anything new? That was how he had thought but no longer: that was all over now. Irimiás would be here soon “to shake things up good and proper” . . . He twisted and turned excitedly in his chair because more than once he seemed to hear someone trying to open the door, but he told himself to calm down (Patience! Patience . . . ’) and asked the landlord for another cup of coffee. Futaki was not alone: the excitement was tangible everywhere in the bar, particularly when Kráner looked out through the glazed door and ceremonially declared: “It’s getting lighter at the horizon’, at which point everyone suddenly came to life, the wine started flowing again, and Mrs. Kráner’s voice rose over the rest, shouting: “What is this? A funeral?!” Swinging her enormous hips she took a turn around the bar ending up in front of Kerekes. “You there! Wake up! Play us something on your accordion!” The farmer raised his head and gave a great belch. “Talk to the landlord. It’s his instrument, not mine.” “Hey, landlord!” Mrs. Kráner shouted. “Where’s your accordion?” “Got it, just bringing it . . .” he muttered, disappearing into the storeroom. “But then you’ll really have to drink.” He made his way to the food shelves, took out the cobweb-covered instrument, gave it a perfunctory clean, t
hen holding it across his lap, took it over to Kerekes. “Careful now! She’s a bit temperamental . . .” Kerekes waved him away, put his shoulders through the straps, ran his hands over the keys of the instrument, then leaned forward to finish his glass. “So where’s the wine?!” Mrs. Kráner was swaying around in the middle of the room with her eyes closed. “Go on, bring him a bottle!” she harried the landlord, and stamped her foot impatiently. “What’s with you, you lazy scum! Don’t fall asleep on me!” She put her hands on her hips and upbraided the laughing menfolk. “Cowards! Worms! Haven’t any of you the guts to take a turn with me?!” Halics was not going to be called a coward by anyone and leapt to his feet, pretending not to hear his wife calling (‘You stay where you are!’). He bounded up to Mrs. Kráner. “Time for a tango!” he cried and straightened his back. Kerekes didn’t even give them a glance so Halics simply grabbed Mrs. Kráner by the waist and started dancing. The others cleared a space for them, clapping, cheering, and encouraging them, so not even Schmidt could stop himself laughing because they did present a truly irresistible spectacle, Halics, at least a head shorter than his partner, cavorting around Mrs. Kráner while she swung those enormous hips of hers without moving her feet. It was as if a wasp had got into Halics’s shirt and he was trying to get it out. The first csárdás finished to loud cheers, Halics’s breast was bursting with pride and he could barely refrain from bellowing at the approving crowd: “See! See! That’s me! That’s Halics!” The next two turns of csárdás were even more spectacular, Halics surpassing himself with a series of complex, quite inimitable manoeuvres, though he did interrupt these with one or two statuesque poses in which he would all but freeze, with his left or right arm above his head, his body seemingly hollowed out, waiting for the next heavy beat so that he might extend his extraordinary and unique moment of glory with more demonic caperings around the puffing and whooping figure of Mrs. Kráner. Each time a dance was over Halics, would demand a tango, and when Kerekes finally relented and struck up a well-known tune, beating out the rhythm with his great heavy boots, the headmaster could no longer resist and strode up to Mrs. Schmidt, who had been woken by the racket around her, and whispered in her ear: “May I have the pleasure?” Once they started, finally he could clap his right hand on Mrs. Schmidt’s back, the scent of her cologne immediately overwhelmed him and held him entranced, so the dance began a little clumsily, if only because he was desperate to hug her close and lose himself in her hot, radiant breasts; in fact he had to exercise supreme self-control to maintain the “obligatory distance” between them. But it wasn’t an altogether hopeless situation because Mrs. Schmidt dreamily pressed herself ever closer to him, so close, in fact, he thought his blood would boil over, and when the music took a still more romantic turn she actually rested her tearful cheeks on the headmaster’s shoulder (‘You know dancing is my one weakness . . . ’). At that point the headmaster could bear it no longer and awkwardly kissed the soft folds of Mrs. Schmidt’s neck: then, having realized what he’d done, he immediately straightened up but didn’t get to apologize because the woman silently yanked him back to her. Mrs. Halics, whose mood had changed from fierce and active hatred to dumb contempt, naturally observed all this: nothing could remain hidden from her. She was fully aware of what was going on. “But my Lord, our Savior, is with me,” she muttered, firm in her faith, and was only wondering why judgment was so slow in coming: where was the hellfire that would surely destroy them all? “What are they waiting for, up there?!” she thought. “How could they look down on this seething nest of wickedness “straight out of Sodom and Gomorrah” and yet do nothing?!” Because she was so sure that judgment was imminent, she waited ever more impatiently for her own moment of judgment and absolution, even though, as she had to admit, she had sometimes — if only for the odd minute — been tempted by the devil himself to take a nip of wine, and then, under the influence of the Evil One, been constrained to look with sinful desire upon the devil-possessed Mrs. Schmidt’s undulating figure. But God exercised firm governance over her soul and she would fight Satan alone, if need be: just let Irimiás, he who had risen from his own ashes, arrive in time to support her, for she could not be expected, all by herself, to bring an end to the headmaster’s invidious assault. She could not help but see that the devil had gained a complete, if momentary victory — that being the devil’s aim — over those gathered in the bar, for, with the exception of Futaki and Kerekes, they were all on their feet, and even those who could not grab a part of either Mrs. Kráner or Mrs. Schmidt stood close to them, waiting for the dance to end so they could take their turn. Kerekes was tireless, beating out the rhythm with his foot behind “the billiards table,” and the impatient dancers would not allow him any time to rest and drain a glass between numbers, but kept putting ever more bottles beside him on the table, so he should not flag in his efforts. Nor did Kerekes object but kept going, one tango after another, then simply repeating the same one over and over again, though nobody noticed. Of course Mrs. Kráner couldn’t keep pace; her breath came short, the sweat poured off her, her legs were burning and she didn’t even wait for the next dance to finish but suddenly turned on her heels, left the excited headmaster and dropped back in her chair. Halics ran after her with a pleading, accusing look: “Rosie, my dear, my one and only, you’re not going to leave me like that are you? It would have been my turn next!” Mrs. Kráner was wiping herself down with a napkin and waved him away, gasping, “What are you thinking of! I’m no longer twenty!” Halics quickly filled a glass and pressed it into her hand. “Drink this, Rosie darling! Then..! . . .” “There won’t be any “then”!” Mrs. Kráner retorted, laughing. “I don’t have the energy, not like you youngsters!” “As concerns that, Rosie dear, I’m not exactly a child myself! No, but there’s a way, Rosie dear! . . .” But he was unable to continue because his eyes now wandered to the woman’s rising and falling bosom. He took a swallow, cleared his throat and said, “I’ll get you a croissant!” “Yes, that’d be nice,” Mrs. Kráner said gently once he’d gone, and wiped her dripping brow. And while Halics was fetching the tray she gazed at the ever energetic Mrs. Schmidt who twirled dreamily from one man to the other in the course of the tango. “Now, let’s get this down you,” said Halics and sat down very close to her. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, one arm around Mrs. Kráner — without risking anything since his wife had finally fallen asleep by the wall, Silently they munched the dry croissants one after the other, which is how it must have happened that the next time they reached for one their eyes met, because there was only one croissant left. “There’s such a draught in here, can’t you feel it?” the woman said, fidgeting. Halics, gazed deeply into her eyes, his own eyes squinting because of the drink. “You know what Rosie darling,” he said, pressing the last croissant into her hand. “Let’s both eat it, OK? You start from this side, me from the other, until we get to the middle. And you know what, sweetheart? We’ll stop the draught in the door with the rest!” Mrs. Kráner burst out laughing. “You’re always pulling my leg! When’s that hole in your head going to heal up? Very good . . . the door . . . stop the draught . . . !” But Halics was determined. “But Rosie dear, it was you who said there was a draft! I’m not pulling your leg. Go on, take a bite!” And so saying he pressed one end of the croissant into her mouth and immediately clamped his teeth round the other end. As soon as he did so the croissant broke in two and fell into their laps, but they — their mouths just opposite each other! — stayed there unmoving, and then, when Halics started feeling dizzy, he summed up courage and kissed the woman on the mouth. Mrs. Kráner blinked in confusion and pushed the passionate Halics away from her. “Now now, Lajos! That’s not allowed! Don’t act like a fool! What are you thinking!? Anyone might be watching!” She adjusted her skirt. It was only once the window and the glazed part of the door were bright with morning that the dance was over. The landlord and Kelemen were both leaning on the counter, the headmaster had flopped across the table next to Schmidt and Mrs. Sc
hmidt, Futaki and Kráner looked like an engaged couple leaning against each other and Mrs. Halics’s head had dropped onto her chest. They were all fast asleep. Mrs. Kráner and Halics carried on whispering for a while but had not strength enough to get up and bring a bottle of wine over from the counter, and so, in the general air of peaceful snoring, they too were eventually overcome by the desire to sleep. Only Kerekes remained awake. He waited until the whispering had stopped then got up, stretched his limbs, and silently and carefully set off to skirt the tables. He felt around for bottles that still had something left in them, then removed them and set them out in a row on “the billiards table’; he examined the glasses too and whenever he found a drop of wine in one he quickly downed it. His enormous shadow followed him like a ghost across the wall, sometimes drifting onto the ceiling, then, once its master took his uncertain place again, it too rested, in the corner at the back. He swept the cobwebs off the scars and fresh scratches of his frightening face, and then — as best he could — he poured the remnant wine into a single glass and, puffing, set greedily to drinking. And so he drank on without a break until the very last drop vanished in his great gut. He leaned back in his chair, opened his mouth and tried belching a few times, then, not succeeding, he put his hand on his stomach and rambled his way into the corner where he stuck a finger down his throat and started vomiting. Having finished he straightened up and wiped his mouth with his hand. “So that’s done with,” he grumbled, and retired behind “the billiards table” again. He picked up the accordion and struck up a sentimental, melancholy tune. He swayed his enormous body back and forth in time to the gentle lilting of the music and when he got to the middle of it a tear appeared in the corner of his numb eyelid. If anyone had appeared then and asked him what suddenly bothered him he wouldn’t have been able to say. He was alone with the puffing sound of the instrument and he didn’t mind being overcome, quite swept away by the slow military air. There was no reason to stop playing it and when he got to the end he started it again, without a break, like a child among sleeping adults, full of a happy sense of satisfaction since, apart from him, no one else was in any position to listen. The velvety sound of the accordion stimulated the spiders of the bar to a new frenzy of activity. Every glass, every bottle, every cup and every ashtray was quickly veiled over with a light tissue of webs. The table- and chair-legs were woven into a cocoon and then — with the aid of one or other secret narrow strand — they were all connected up, as if it were a matter of some importance that they, flattened in their secret, remote corners, should be properly advised of every slight tremor, each microscopic shift, and would be so as long as this strange, all-but-invisible network remained intact. They wove over the faces, hands, and feet of the sleepers too then, lightning-quick, retreated to their hidey-holes so that given one barely perceptible vibration, they should be ready to start again. The horse-flies who were seeking safety from the spiders in movement and night tirelessly described their figures of eight around the faintly flickering lamp. Kerekes played on, half-asleep, his semi-conscious brain full of bombs and crashing planes, of soldiers fleeing the field, and of burning towns, one image rapidly succeeding the other with dizzying speed: and when they entered, it was so silent, and they so unnoticed, that they stopped in astonishment, surveying the scene before them, so Kerekes only sensed, rather than knew, that Irimiás and Petrina had arrived.
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