by Peter Nadas
All right, his wife hadn’t died, but his senses hadn’t tricked him completely. Somebody had been lurking for weeks. Tramp, they call his son now. And if they only knew what sort of scoundrel he really was. At the same time he couldn’t wholly disregard his supposition regarding his damn wife’s sudden death.
Why can’t he evict her from his heart; why can’t he forget her forever.
His dead mother was also shouting into his thoughts, though she was usually soft-spoken.
He grabbed a round wicker basket that he had filled with string beans early that morning. The midday heat and nervous fever conspiring against him had accomplished their mission. The beans were particularly beautiful, long, butter-yellow, and tender. The richness of his garden was due partly to the high level of the groundwater and partly to the basin behind the sand dunes, chiseled to barrenness, which filled with thick vapor all night long and sometimes even in the morning.
There were several varieties of harmful pests, but nothing ever dried out, not even in the worst heat waves. He took the basket inside and dropped it on the floor.
The house, built of planed wood, had two small areas, one room and a kitchen; a small alcove opened from the kitchen, no larger than a closet, which he used as a pantry. He tore open the pantry door. Of course, he found no one behind it. Empty bottles and jars of preserved fruit lined the shelves, strawberry, currant, and gooseberry; he was particularly proud of these. In the stifling dimness the cellophane covers on the jars were tight as drums.
This was about the time he usually prepared his lunch; and he wanted to put up the string beans for winter while they were still fresh.
He could not find his small knife.
Military order reigned in his new house. Everything was bare and cheerless. As if a putrid belch had come up into his mouth from a queasy stomach, he cursed the disorder and filth he found here but blamed not himself but a third person for everything, including the missing knife he could not find. He saw the furniture and other objects as dusty, downright grimy.
They stole my little knife, he said to himself. He saw that the fingers of his strong hands were filthy; crescent moons of thick dirt sat under each nail.
Everyone but he would have seen these objects as clean, if a bit worn. He had collected them from various places over many years.
The small knife he was looking for now, for example, he had stolen from his own house in Budapest.
To free himself of the humiliation, he tore the shirt off his body.
But he no longer wished for calm and he did not think he had gone mad either.
The sound of his every movement was as if somebody or something else had produced it. A prowling wild beast or the murderer spying on him. He tore open the door to the room, and its dusty emptiness hit him like a blow. There was the strictly made-up bed; a draft ruffled the faded linen curtain on the sunny window.
He threw his pants on the bed; they landed with the legs spread.
His mother cried out in his ears.
This is not right for you, my son.
In his drenched apron, leaning against the wooden washtub, he held the scrub brush in his hand, puffy from lye; not right for you, not right for you, son. Of course it wasn’t right for him, but how in hell would his mother know what was right for him.
He chucked his underpants in the pile of clothes to be washed. He earnestly sought his lost calm in his nakedness, but for that he should have removed the weight of his body from his soul.
You really think, Mother, that you will tell me what’s right for me.
And when he finally got the big knife in his hand, because the damned little one hadn’t turned up, he gripped it as if he were getting ready to kill. He never wanted to keep animals, to avoid the need to kill them. He had seen too much human blood not to dread the sight of killing. He faced the simple task of cleaning and chopping the string beans, but what occurred to him was that he had never beaten a prisoner of his own free will. He was not quite clear about whose question he was answering this way, nor could he deny that at times he had had no choice but to dish out a few necessary blows. Why on earth did he have to excuse himself now, and to whom. Rebellious prisoners would bang on the cell doors or kick them with the tips or metal heels of their boots; others would make a racket on the ribs of radiators.
Of course he had to dish out some blows; how could he avoid it.
On the Visegrád shore, tipcarts at the distant mine were creaking, making their usual steady noise.
It was late afternoon; the heat let up a little.
They will creak all night; they will keep on creaking in the eternity of sin. And all those fantasies, sensations, visions, and desires that during the past months had settled into fine grooves or drawn furrows on the rim of his receding consciousness, were now hatching, returning, reviving, and cunningly going on the attack. In the parched heat’s heavy vapor and reddish trembling dust, the sun was preparing to take its leave, far beyond the distant mountains. One could still not say, though, that he had thought over his oppressive life, or perhaps his sins, or anything else. He was hurt and afraid, inkling gave birth to memory, memory begat images, and he was being helplessly tossed about among them.
In the meantime the wax beans, locked in liter jars and wrapped in cloth, were now properly steaming in a large pot on the stove. But his feverish activity had not eased his nervous tension. His naked body was becoming sweaty and stained, and when he thought about going to bathe soon, he did not mean cooling off his body. Later, he took soap, found a clean shirt, unhooked a towel, and threw it over his shoulder along with a clean shirt and pants. He turned off the gas stove, giving the tap to the container an extra twist. He walked out of the house, carefully locked the door, and was about to hide the key at its usual place, under the large stone with which his son would one day bash his head in if he weren’t careful, when he was violently shaken by a mute shadow he detected at the edge of his vision; he shuddered, and on his back and chest the muscles froze into veritable knots.
The pastor was standing motionless under the apricot tree.
When he had come by earlier, he’d shouted good evening very respectfully and then had stopped when he heard dull, harmless noises filtering from the little house. He did not intend to surprise the other man.
Now, he quickly, almost stuttering, begged Balter’s pardon.
But meanwhile his eyes roved over the other man’s naked body, from his neck to his loins, and more thoroughly than they had at midday.
What in God’s name are you looking for, shouted a surprised Balter, what do you want on my property again.
Of course he meant not his property but his uncovered loins, by which men measure each other’s abilities.
All the pastor could do was not look at Balter’s naked body; he looked straight into his eyes.
Which only deepened the embarrassing feeling in both men of male defenselessness and vulnerability. Because it is forbidden to look at what arouses their curiosity.
It was especially painful for the pastor that because of his careless glances their conversation had begun with blasphemous swearing.
He really did not mean to catch him by surprise, the pastor said quietly, please forgive his coming back uninvited, but frankly, he could not rest because of his crude way of talking earlier that day.
He would like to apologize.
Frankly, that is the reason he came back.
Balter did not care for this kind of weakness, that a person should have to apologize for having used abusive language, and therefore he did not believe the pastor. He just looked hard at him, wondering what he really wanted.
You don’t say, he replied roughly, so you’d be that famously strong priest, he said aggressively, though more softly than before.
The pastor responded with the shy smile of a truly strong person, you’ve got it, that’s me.
Now, don’t go thinking I scare easy.
Frankly I don’t.
I already saw at noon, d
on’t you worry, that you were just a priest or something, Balter continued.
I am a pastor, the other man corrected him quietly.
I’m not blind, I see what I see, but don’t worry, I’m not interested in your business. You can be a priest for all I care. I’m not interested in God anyway.
His voice, the hard edge of his words, kept him from being at one with what his face was projecting.
People also say about you that you like chopping wood better than preaching, and they like you better that way, with the axe.
His smile now was the kind a pleasant memory produces.
But then what do you do with that son-of-a-bitch God of yours.
Suddenly the afternoon’s nightmare ended for him. He felt that with his involuntary smile he was back in his element, and so he continued what he had started.
Don’t for a minute think I’m scared of any kind of god or priest or parson. You can bet your ass on that. For all I care you could be Miklós Toldi* or Hercules himself, you’d better believe it.
I gladly believe it, I assure you, the pastor responded, and despite Balter’s nakedness he stepped closer. But the other man’s every word had hurt him. I don’t want to lie, but looking at you, I don’t think I’m a match for your physical strength.
This created a long silence between the two of them.
Balter wasn’t sure whether the pastor was mocking him. Those three phrases—gladly believe it, looking at you, and physical strength—affected him as if they had been blows. As if they were foreign words. He suspected the learned man was dressing him down for his ignorance, was making fun of him, had nothing but contempt for him. And the pastor weighed the likelihood that Balter might try to hit him, given how close they were, but he feared not for himself, only for his glasses.
The glasses were new; the lenses had to be made to order, specially, by the optician.
Nonetheless, with his wide smiling blue eyes behind those glasses he charmed the other man.
If one lives for a long time without feeling any physical and spiritual friendship, even the germs of feeling tend to petrify.
At that moment, unexpectedly even for himself, Balter slipped the key under the stone.
I always put it here when I leave the house, he said quickly, as if he didn’t himself know why he was giving away his most precious secret. Since you’ve seen it anyway I might as well tell you, he said by way of explanation. Anyway, it’s better to have someone else know about it, one never knows what might happen.
He put the soap down on the step, hung his shirt and towel on the door handle, and then with leisurely motions slipped his legs into his pants. The leisureliness was part of his fraternal feeling.
As a young man he had had a friend, and the two of them would have jumped into fire for each other; in the army too he had had a bosom buddy. But not since then.
He had to pull hard on his leather belt because he’d lost a lot of weight over the past few months.
He goes down to the river to bathe every night, he said as he buttoned up, and looked again at the pastor, withdrawn behind his indulgent, shy smile.
If you don’t think it impertinent, frankly I’d like to go with you.
The suggestion hit Balter like another real blow. He looked at the pastor; was he mocking him. Gentlemen say things like that to ladies, I’d like to go with you. With a certain leisureliness and sluggishness, he weighed whether to hit the man.
Above the sizzling landscape the cloudless evening sky was flaming red.
You know, at this hour in the evening, the pastor explained, when it’s not so hot anymore, frankly I usually go for a walk anyway.
They started out under the flaming sky, walking side by side for a while on the footpath.
So, did they find the tramp they were looking for so hard.
It’s better that they didn’t. You see, cried the pastor bluntly, one has to admit, frankly, that the good Lord has once again made things turn out more wisely.
The way he saw it, the authorities would have fixed the scoundrel’s wagon for sure if they had found him.
The two men’s voices sounded identical in the flaming air. No voice should rise above the silence of the landscape, neither of them should hurt the other.
By the grace of Jesus Christ they steered clear of the sin of hitting anyone, the pastor told Balter warmly, as if he were initiating him into jealously guarded secrets of Creation. Because he realized they both had much base feeling in them, he didn’t deny it, and wouldn’t care to lie. Frankly, they had wanted to retrieve his grandson’s pants and the miserable creature had stolen bread from the store too. Whether one likes it or not, there’s a murderous instinct in man.
Many damned scoundrels roam all over the world, answered Balter in his own way, very courteously. I should know, you can believe me. I’ve got experience in things like this.
The pastor really didn’t want to upset their fresh understanding, but it was hard to relinquish his missionary intentions.
Without Providence, we are all ignorant children, little children. In our great ignorance we are all sinners.
With cautious glances they measured the effect of their words on each other.
Balter had put up with party seminars and propaganda meetings more easily than with such missionary texts; at political rallies he had listened repeatedly to the theory that only a few more years of hard work were needed to lay the final foundations of socialism. With patience, perseverance, and mainly great vigilance, because the enemy, both without and within, lurked everywhere. He did not believe a word of it, and he knew what the game was really all about. If they put a communist and a fascist in the same cell, and they did, what the hell did they talk about. But the pastor’s words filled him with some primeval passion.
A dead furrow led them across the abandoned orchard where Balter had not had time to fix the devastation.
He did not believe in any kind of providence, and if it was spoken about in such unctuous tones, he preferred to take revenge by swearing. At the mention of communism or fascism he shrugged his shoulders, but the orchard interested him more than providence. What he thought was, a plague and a pox on your comrades, not me, but if things stay as they are and the old lords can’t come back, that’s all right with me too.
Everyone has a mother, that’s what I say, a baron also shits.
When they reached the boundary of Balter’s fertile land near the shore, clearly marked by stakes, they had to continue in single file through a thicket, its soil soft with silt, until they reached the willows by the river.
Balter went in front, the pastor walked behind him.
The pungent vapors of decaying plants pervaded the air.
The water level had dropped to the deep part of the riverbed during these dry months.
The shore was steep.
As if showing off the splendors of his property, Balter led the pastor to a lovely glade in the willows where, standing side by side, they could watch the landscape reveal the powerful sweep of the river and the bare line of the far shore in the reddish vapor of twilight.
So that’s where you used to work, I heard in the village, the pastor said after a long time.
There it lay, at the northern edge of the small cathedral town of many churches, a shape alien to the landscape and to the water, the old block of the baroque penal institution, with its pointed watchtowers and thick brick walls.
No matter where one looked, one couldn’t help seeing those walls; to live close to them and twice a week to preach the word of God there and give testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ—there was no greater ordeal in the pastor’s life.
For thirty years I served there, that’s right, Balter replied quietly, almost bashfully, as if he had heard the dread in the pastor’s voice. He laughed a little. I began under the rule of His Excellency the regent, if you know who I mean, your reverence, then I served our father Rákosi and I swore allegiance to Kádár too.*
I have been doing my service for thi
rty years also, said the pastor. His tone was more resigned than it had been before.
The other man mustn’t sense too much of the immeasurable difference between the two. Maybe a little. But the pastor thought it wouldn’t be right to miss a chance to testify to his own long service, if only in a modest way. As things were, the distance between them had grown too wide. Because of the testimony he had to give to Christ, the desire for merciless revenge only deepened in the pastor.
And so as not to emphasize the various enormous distances between them while they stood so closely together, he didn’t look at the other man for a long time.
No matter how true it was that he had devoted his vocation to following Christ, he had to take his bloody revenge on someone. He could not avoid the feeling and the compulsion stemming from it.
It was January when I got married, Balter related with charming innocence, I took my oath of service in February, and in February of this year I completed my service. Believe me, it was enough.
We moved here in the month of July from the Tisza, which is where I had my first position—ten years at Tiszavésztő, if you know where that is. That’s how I’ve been spending my service, said the pastor indulgently.
Despite his good intentions the different nature of their services could not be equalized. Or perhaps it could have been if he had eked out of himself a little more goodwill, but then what would he have done about the fate of his only son and his own dark hatred. At best they were equal in age and in the unstoppable rhythm of mortality, which they both had to face.
Still, their long silence did not become unpleasant, since they both were interested more in the intention of what they said than in its literal meaning.
Whatever happened to them before now, they were both on the way out of their lives.
And now I am free, Balter said cautiously.
Which had roughly the effect it would have had if he were a small child who for the first time said something dreadfully indecent out loud. But coming from an old man, the statement had a certain irony. And in the ensuing silence the pastor heard well the sigh escaping from the other man’s heavy body, and then the silence that led to the next sentence.