The Melancholy of Resistance

by Krasznahorkai, László

  Try it, redshank.

  Just you wait. At what time did The Prince emerge from the truck yesterday?

  What time? I’m telling you, you don’t understand anything.

  Did you personally hear what he said?

  Only those who were standing close to him heard him.

  Then how do you know what he said?

  The general factotum understands him. He always interprets nice and loud.

  What did he say yesterday evening, for example?

  That toads like you are no use to anyone.

  He commanded you to ‘tear down everything’. Correct?

  The Prince never commands.

  He said, ‘Build a new world upon the ruins!’ Correct?

  You’re pretty well informed, redshank.

  What does it mean? Explain it to me: build a new world upon the ruins.

  Explain it to you? Pointless.

  All right. What’s your job? You don’t look like a tramp.

  Why? Do you think you look any better? What are those baubles on your chest? I wouldn’t go round dressed like that.

  I asked you what your job was.

  I dug the soil for you lot.

  You’re not a peasant.

  No, but you are.

  You speak as if you had some education.

  You’re on the wrong trail. You really are a small-time operator.

  It’s all the same to you if I shoot you like some filthy stray dog then?

  Brilliant guesswork.

  Why?

  Because I don’t want to dig soil for you any more.

  What do you mean by that?

  You’re an earth shifter yourself. Like a bloody earth-worm. You dig and dig—and you enjoy it too. Not me.

  Is that some kind of code you’re talking in?

  Sure. I’m an educated man, remember? Yes, code …

  Answer me: when they put The Prince back in the truck you all left the square. Under whose orders? Describe them. Who told you what to do? When you got to the post office, whose idea was it that you should split into smaller groups?

  What an imaginaton you have!

  Give me the name of the man in command.

  We only have one leader. And you’ll not catch him.

  How do you know he has escaped? Did he tell you? Did he tell you where?

  You will never catch him!

  Is The Prince some devil out of hell?

  Oh, it’s not as simple as that. He’s flesh and blood, but his flesh and blood are different.

  If nothing matters to you, explain to me how he got you all under his spell? Does your Prince exist at all? Why attack the town? Why did you come here? To lay it waste? With your bare hands? What do you want? I don’t understand you.

  I can’t answer so many questions at once.

  Then tell me this: were you involved in the murders?

  Yes. But not enough.

  What?

  I told you. Not enough.

  You killed a child at the station and I am asking you, not as your interrogator but as man to man: is there nothing sacred to you?

  Man to man, I’ll tell you: nothing. When are you going to give me that gun?

  I think I’d rather wring your neck. Very slowly.

  I had nothing to do with the child. But go on, wring it.

  Are all those people in the square, those hundreds, are they all like you?

  How should I know?

  I feel like vomiting.

  You seem to have lost your patience after all. Why is your whole face twitching? Where’s your military discipline?

  Stand to attention!

  I already am. You’ve handcuffed me, I’ve got an itchy nose.

  Interrogation over. I’ll hand you over to the military tribunal! Get over to the door!

  You said you’d give me a gun.

  To the door with you!!!

  A smart soldier boy like you, and a liar. Military tribunal. Where are you? Hasn’t anybody told you nothing’s working? Military tribunal indeed.

  I told you. Move. To the door!

  You’ve gone really red. Redshank. The name fits. But I don’t give a shit. See you, redshank.

  Two soldiers stood in the doorway and when the man in the quilted jacket reached them they grabbed his arm, dragged him from the hall and shut the door behind them. One could still hear them as they started down the stairs, then everything fell silent, the lieutenant adjusted his tunic and the rest watched him wondering whether he’d regain control of his temper. It wasn’t clear who precisely was counting on what, but in any case it seemed that those in the hall—all, with one exception—were waiting for the lieutenant to make a remark addressed individually to them, something that, unlike the depravity of the man in the quilted jacket, might have the effect of drawing them together and in response to which they might be able to give voice to their own sense of outrage. The one exception was Eszter, for the effect of the interrogation was quite different on him; what he discovered from the man with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, in the course of cross-questioning, did not infuriate him but left him in an even more advanced state of apathy than before, for it confirmed his worst fears that Valuska, having got mixed up with people like this, would certainly not have survived to tell the tale. It wasn’t simply that he no longer wanted to explain anything himself, he wouldn’t have had the strength to do it; he couldn’t even raise enough energy to contribute to the furious muttering that ensued once the lieutenant had calmed down and neglected to address some ‘individual remarks’—any remark that might have elicited a vehement display of communal emotion—to those by the wall, who were desperately anxious to express a view, for it was all the same to Eszter if ‘the man was an absolute scoundrel’; he didn’t care whether ‘such people could be killed with guns at all’; and when his nearest neighbour, Mr Volent, clearly expecting some form of approval, whispered to him, ‘Death is too good for him, don’t you think, the godless swine?’ he responded to his friendly overture with the merest nod and continued sitting immobile, a silent interloper in the chorus of whisperers, who persisted in staring straight ahead of him with a deeply troubled expression on his face even after the rest had suddenly fallen silent. The door opened but he did not hear it, someone quietly swept before him but he did not raise his head, nor did he notice it when the lieutenant called one of those sitting by the wall into the middle of the room, and, when he finally looked up, he was almost surprised to find his fat neighbour standing in the place formerly occupied by the prisoner, and, somewhere in a corner at the back, to discover Harrer, who seemed to be feverishly relating something to Mrs Eszter; Eszter, however, showed no sign of surprise and this sudden change in the cast of actors failed entirely to rouse him from his state of indifference, so he did not see any particular significance in the fact that Harrer—once the woman had left him in the corner and went over to approach the lieutenant, presumably in order to convey a piece of useful information—first winked at him then clearly tried to communicate something to him with a few reassuring hand gestures. He had no idea what was going on, nor what all this winking and ever more public form of gesturing from the opposite corner might mean, but whatever it was intended to signify left him utterly cold, and much to Harrer’s obvious annoyance, he turned his head away. He gazed at the officer who kept giving tiny nods as he listened to Mrs Eszter’s message, but what the subject of the conversation was remained a mystery until the lieutenant rewarded the whispered account with a confidential look and, interrupting the hardly begun interrogation of the new witness, turned on his heels, marched over to the presidential chair and, standing to attention, spoke: ‘Colonel, sir! The man we dispatched has returned. He says the chief of police remains in his flat, but is still under the influence of alcohol, not sober enough to produce’. ‘What was that!’ a furious voice snapped back, as if its owner had been rudely roused from a state of deep contemplation. ‘He’s pissed as a newt, sir. The policeman we were looking for is drunk and unconsci
ous and no one can wake him.’ Eszter strained his eyes for a while, trying to penetrate the general gloom which was particularly thick on the far side of the hall, but in vain; it was impossible to see anyone from where he was sat and had been sitting since his arrival, nevertheless, knowing that the chair, which was surely intended for giants, must be occupied by somebody hidden behind its high back, he did eventually locate a hand in the darkness just as it was slowly descending to the chair’s ornately carved right arm. ‘What a dump!’ the voice crackled out again. ‘One gets smashed out of his head, another is shit scared and stays at home indoors and won’t come over even with an escort. What do you think we should do with these gutless bastards?!’ ‘One must draw the appropriate conclusions, colonel, sir!’ ‘Correct! Clip a pair of handcuffs on them both and get them round here on the double!’ ‘Yessir!’ The lieutenant clicked his heels together, then, passing the order on to the two soldiers outside, added, ‘Should I continue the interrogation, sir?’ ‘By all means, Géza, my boy, by all means …’ came the answer, in a tone that, to Eszter, suggested a kind of listless intimacy: the invisible occupant of the chair recognized the necessity of correct procedure but wished at the same time to imply that he found it personally distressing that his lieutenant should be saddled with tasks so clearly below his station. How far he was right or mistaken in indirectly attributing this state of mind to the colonel, Eszter—who, for the first time, had regained the trace of a capacity to transcend his own depressed state of mind—learned only much later, because for the time being, when he started to examine the mysterious circumstances he seemed to be faced with as best he could, all he could discover was that beside the chair in the middle of the bare hall, which served not only as the seat of the man who appeared to want to remain in the background while having overall charge of interrogations and possibly of all military operations, there was also an enormous gilt-framed picture that practically covered the dark-green hangings of the notable hall, showing a battle appropriate to the historical dignity of the place. This was all, and no more, that he could make note of in that first minute, and even these impressions appeared as uncertain hypotheses rather than facts, though any further questions regarding this particular leader of the army of liberation, questions regarding the exclusion of light, for instance (‘Possibly reasons of security …?’), like why, if they drew the curtains, did they not switch on the two chandeliers that dangled from the ceiling, or what the lieutenant-colonel in the chair, with his back to people but facing the historical scene in the painting, was actually doing in this darkened temporary HQ, did not lie in his immediate power to answer, if only because at that point Harrer sneaked over to him from the far corner, sat down in the recently occupied chair, and, now that the lieutenant had returned, acted as if he were interested only in the newly commenced interrogation of Eszter’s ex-neighbour, never taking his eyes off them, but cleared his throat and tried to tell him that he had moved closer only so that he might succeed in informing him of something that all his winks and hand gestures had failed to convey earlier. ‘Everything is all right with him—you know who I mean,’ Harrer whispered, eyes still fixed on the lieutenant; everyone’s attention, including the three men watching beside him, as well as the officer himself, was fully focused on events in the centre of the room. ‘But not a word, professor! You know nothing! If they ask you tell them you have seen neither hide nor hair of him since yesterday! You understand?’ ‘No,’ Eszter looked up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Don’t turn to me!’ Harrer warned him, hardly able to disguise his anxiety that he might have to name the individual concerned, and repeated as if explaining the matter to a child: ‘Him! I found him at the station, I told him which direction to take in order to escape, he should be miles away by now, all you have to do is deny everything if asked!’ he gabbled, and when, glancing up at Volent, he noticed that the rest seemed to be aware of the whispering, he added simply, ‘Everything!’ Eszter stared uncomprehendingly before him (‘What’s there to deny … ? What … him?’), then, suddenly, a hot flush shot through him, his head snapped to attention and, not giving a fig for Harrer’s firm injunction but suppressing an outright cry, he burst out, loudly enough for every eye to be turned on him, ‘Is he alive?!’ The other grinned confusedly under the lieutenant’s furious gaze, and spread his arms apologetically as if to shift the responsibility, intending to imply that he could not be held responsible for what the man sitting next to him cared to do, but the increasingly desperate smile he presented to the officer only made the latter more angry, and it even seemed likely that he would not let the matter rest there, so Harrer thought it advisable to get up immediately and, in order not to disturb the interrogation with the sound of his shoes, to tiptoe carefully back into his corner behind Mrs Eszter, who never once took her eyes off her husband. Eszter would have loved to follow him, but when he leapt up to do so, the lieutenant barked at him (‘Silence!’), so he was compelled to sit down again and—having thought through the matter at lightning speed—quickly realized that there was no point in throwing questions at Harrer, since he would only repeat what he had already said in that roundabout way of his. He didn’t need to hear it again, it was as clear as day now what was meant by ‘Him’, the ‘station’ and by the expression he was ‘miles away by now’, but the fear of disappointment warned him to remain calm and not to allow the meaning of the words to enter directly into his consciousness; he sipped at them, carefully, and concluded that he should investigate the reliability of the information as thoroughly as he could, but then the news broke through the shaky barriers of his scepticism and more or less swept all his fears away, so he abandoned all thought of investigating the truth of Harrer’s story. Because what he had heard brought Mrs Harrer’s account to mind and in that moment he knew that the story must be true in every detail; the present report validated what he had heard at dawn and that, in turn, validated the present without a shadow of doubt as far as he was concerned, and, as in a single flash, he saw Harrer on his way to the station, speaking to Valuska, then saw his friend beyond the town’s precincts, and suddenly he felt an extraordinary sense of relief, as if an enormous weight had been removed from his shoulders, a weight he had carried from the moment he set foot outside his house in Wenckheim Avenue. What he felt was indeed relief and, at the same time, some entirely new excitement seized him, for, having thought the matter through, he quickly realized that the chance, or rather, misunderstanding, that had brought him here could not have brought him to a better place, for he was precisely where he might settle the affair of his friend, where, if some kind of charge had really been mistakenly levelled at Valuska, he could persuade the authorities to drop it. Not a trace remained in him of his previous helplessness and despair, in fact he was running a little ahead of the tasks that confronted him, but when he started to get lost in the details of Valuska’s return he pulled himself up, reminded himself of the need for sobriety and concentrated entirely on the effort to catch up with events in the hall and follow the course of the interrogation in the middle, since he had concluded that the best way of putting together a clear picture of all that had happened was by assembling information from the various witnesses and drawing the appropriate conclusion. He completely shut out everything else and, after a few sentences, it became obvious to him, as to everyone else, that the current witness, the enormous man who had been his neighbour, was none other than the circus manager, or rather the director, as the man, who reminded Eszter of some Balkan landowner, kept delicately pointing out to the lieutenant in his own highly courteous manner, if only because the lieutenant, who held some documents in his hand at which he glanced from time to time, insisted in using the language of the ‘work permit’ by referring to him, despite every attempt to correct the term, as simply ‘the head of the company’, that is to say whenever he managed to interject a question in the endless stream of words issuing from the mouth of the witness. However he tried though, however frequently he commanded the man to ‘answ
er only the question put before you’, he did not seem to be having much success and looked ever more exhausted in the process, and as for stopping his flow, that was impossible, for the director, while acknowledging each warning with a slight bow and an ‘of course, naturally’, was not to be shifted for a moment, and not only picked up each sentence precisely at the point where he was impatiently interrupted but never once lost the thread of the argument he had been pursuing, talking ever more loudly as if with the purpose of addressing the far end of the hall, stressing and restressing the importance of ‘helping the officers present to a clearer understanding of the principles of art, and particularly the art of the circus’. He talked of the nature of art, and the thousands of years of neglect that led to misconceptions about the liberties that should be accorded to it (‘as in our case!’), drawing a wide circle with the dead cigar between his fingers as he explained that the unexpected, the shocking, the extraordinary had been one inevitable aspect of great art, just as much as the audience’s ‘unreadiness’ and ‘unpredictability’ in the face of revolutionary artistic change, and how the exceptional nature of theatrical production (he nodded as he spoke to the lieutenant who was again trying to interrupt him) was bound to confront the ignorance of the public, from which it clearly does not follow that, as some earlier witnesses had appeared to insist, the creator who strives to enrich the world with ever newer inventions should make any allowance for this ignorance, for the reason that—and here the director referred to his long years of experience, for if he could say anything at all with confidence it was this—that, beside its own ignorance, the public prized nothing so much as novelty, the greater the novelty the better, and the thing they treated in such a whimsical fashion was the very thing they most voraciously demanded. He said that he felt he was among people to whom he could speak his mind freely, so, while sticking closely to the lieutenant’s question, he just needed to say something, a single sentence, no more, that might seem unrelated: however difficult it was for him to do so, he had to admit, that in the aforementioned conflict between the liberating artist and the lack of preparedness of those at whom his work was directed, and he didn’t want to sound alarmist about this, there wasn’t very much hope of a satisfactory resolution, for it was ‘as if the Creator had set them in amber for ever’, the general public were frozen in their attitude of unreadiness, and so whoever put his faith in the power of an extraordinary spectacle was bound to come to a sad end. A sad end, repeated the director in ringing tones, and if the lieutenant—and here he dipped his cigar respectfully in the direction of the officer—were asking him whether he regarded the work of his humble, but highly committed, colleagues, as well as himself, as heroic or ridiculous in the circumstances, he would prefer, and no doubt they would understand this, not to express an opinion, or at any rate he believed that in the light of the tensions he had revealed and the supplementary point he had just made there was really not much more to explain, being certain that the clear innocence of his company in the matter of the regrettable incidents of the previous night was something he had concisely but firmly, even loudly, to state—if only because of the testimony of the local population, whose accusations demonstrated their narrow outlook—though he knew that he was wasting his breath because as soon as he opened his mouth he would be told to shut up. Perhaps he might begin—he lit what remained of his cigar—by saying that his production was concerned with the art of the circus, nothing else, so the first part of the accusation, that every attraction, every item on the bill, was merely a front, was patently false, and that he, the director of their common creative endeavour and their spiritual father, never had, nor ever would have, any ambition beyond confronting the ever growing audience with ‘the phenomenon of an extraordinary being’, and as concerned himself—if they would allow him a bitter if amusing turn of phrase—this was quite enough to be getting on with. And if this first charge was so lacking in logic, how much more was it the case with the second, according to which, as he understood from the words of hysterical local people at the outset of the interrogations, the member of his company known as ‘The Prince’—he blew out smoke and waved it away before the lieutenant’s face—was supposed to be the chief agitator behind the recent riots, which was not only impossible but, if he might be permitted to say so, perfectly ridiculous, if only because the accusation was directed precisely against the one figure who, because he had wholly identified with his controversial role even within the company itself, had most to fear from such violent developments, and who, once he saw that the director’s anxiety was justified, that the public was mistaking his stage role for reality and was therefore becoming susceptible to inflammatory rhetoric, was so terrified that, contrary to all reasonable argument, far from assuming leadership, he feared the passions of the crowd might be turned on him, and so contrived, with the assistance of his colleagues, to escape as soon as the violence began. After all this, the director said, as he put his hand behind his back, obliged to flick his ash on the floor again, the conductors of these interrogations, whom he deeply respected, might very well think that the subject was closed, it being clear as daylight that the accusations levelled against the circus were false; the over-excited performers should try to calm down and go back to what they knew best, their craft, and as concerned the rest, the investigation of the events and the apportioning of guilt, these were best left to those people best equipped to carry it out—to whose authority he naturally bowed and who he would in all respects obey, though, at the same time, his conscience obliged him to reveal everything and so, deeply affected as he was by all that had happened, he would like, by way of farewell, to make a decisive contribution to the undoubted success of the enquiry. He wanted to say something about those twenty or thirty hardened hooligans, one of whom, to the astonishment of them all, they had just been able to observe from close quarters; no more than twenty or thirty desperate scoundrels who, ever since the start of their tour of the southern lowlands, had insinuated themselves into the audience at every step, from village to village, from performance to performance, and tried their uttermost to invest each and every appearance of the company with danger. These people exploited the up to now reasonable travelling support of the company, a reasonable support which yesterday night lost all vestiges of control because their imaginations had been inflamed, their susceptibilities and credulity stretched beyond all measure, by the rumours then put about—indeed, still being put about—that ‘our excellent colleague’ was not acting the role of a prince but really was one, a kind of ‘prince of darkness’—the director smiled piteously at the expression—who strode about the world like an avenging judge and accepted the offer of his recruits to act as executives of his justice, as if that man, said he, raising his arms heavenward in indignation, blessed with all the gifts of his profession and yet, and here he slowly lowered his arms, subtly shifting the nature of his indignation, ‘stricken as he was with terrible physical handicaps, wholly dependent on others to provide him with the bare necessities of life and utterly helpless otherwise’ might have been capable of such a thing! This will be enough to convince you, said he, giving the lieutenant a hard stare, how base, how cynical, how hideously depraved this gang is, who, as we have heard said before, really do hold ‘nothing sacred’, a fact with which he, as director, had been all too familiar from the beginning of the tour, for every place they performed he had been careful to request the local authorities for assistance in order to ensure that the evening should pass without incident. And everywhere they went they had been granted this, so, naturally, he requested it here too; his first stop, as always, had been the police station, but at the time the authorization guaranteeing the security of his artistes—indeed of art itself—was granted him by the chief officer, he had no idea he was facing a man incapable of discharging his duties. He was deeply disappointed by this, he said, quite astonished, since there were only twenty or thirty rogues to manage, and here he stood now, his company broken up, his terrified colleagues ‘sca
ttered about the world’, and he had no idea who would compensate him for the material, but, above all, psychological, losses he had had to suffer as a result. Of course, he protested, he understood that this was not the moment for the addressing of personal grievances, nevertheless, until his turn came round, as, he was sure, it quickly would, he would like to remain in town if they would grant him the permission, and in the meantime he simply asked that the investigating officers should deal ruthlessly with the offenders, and, in that hope, he would now take his leave, passing the officer the copy of the official authorization should he have any use for it, willing to offer any feeble assistance he could in order to help them clear up the matter and uncover the truly guilty men. His speech really finished at last, the director produced a piece of paper from an inner pocket of his fur coat, and handed the ‘performance permit’ over to the helpless officer, who could barely stand on his feet for exhaustion, then, holding the freshly extinguished cigar at some distance from him, he gave a curt nod to the far end of the hall and the assembled witnesses and marched through the door, briefly turning round in the doorway to add, ‘I am staying at the Komló Hotel’, and left interrogators and interrogatees equally dumb and looking like a defeated army in the wake of an all-conquering horde. Harrer, Volent, everyone was in the same condition—not so much convinced as flattened by the sheer weight of the director’s rolling, irresistible cadences, by the combined force of something that comprised statements, arguments, pleas and revelations, in fact so utterly buried were they under it they needed someone to come along and dig them out, and it was not surprising that it took them some time before they recovered all their faculties and the numbness slowly drained from them; before the lieutenant, wounded and furious, set out to pursue the orator who had taken charge of his own fate, but glanced at the document in his hand and stopped again while Mrs Eszter and Harrer merely stared at one another; before Volent and his companions, who seemed to have turned into living statues while listening to the protestations, pulled incredulous faces, waved their arms and started speaking all together at once. Eszter remained aloof from the general hubbub which did at least reveal the state of everyone’s mind, for it was far from him to pass any judgement on anything, he was merely learning, taking things in, as if the speech and the reaction to it were of equal importance, nevertheless it seemed advisable to tender his request in a manner appropriate to the mood of the investigation committee and, especially, to try to judge the state of mind of the man who seemed most likely to make the decision regarding Valuska in the light of the director’s statement and the passions aroused by it. But this was easier said than done, for when the lieutenant, clearly undecided, went over to his chief, clicked his heels and asked, ‘Should I have him brought back, sir?’ the latter responded merely with a regretful wave of his hand which signified either utter indifference or bitter resignation; then, after a long silence, in a voice that, this time, sounded unmistakably bitter, added, ‘Tell me, Géza, my boy, have you had a really good look at this picture?’ in response to which the officer, to cover up his confusion, replied in ringing tones, ‘Beg to report, no, sir!’ ‘Then be so good as to observe,’ the wistful voice continued, ‘the order of battle at the top, there in the right-hand corner. Artillery, cavalry, infantry. This,’ he cried suddenly, ‘is not a rout led by impudent hoodlums, but the art of war!’ ‘Yessir!’ ‘Look at the hussars there in the middle, and there, you see them? The regiment of dragoons splits into two in a pincer movement and surrounds them! Note the general, there on the hill, and the troops there, on the field, and you will observe the difference between a filthy little sty and a war!’ ‘Yessir! I will conclude the interrogations at once.’ ‘Please don’t bother, lieutenant! I can’t bring myself to listen to any more screeching, to any more ridiculous nonsense, in this filthy hole! How many are left?’ ‘I shall be quick, sir!’ ‘Do hurry, Géza, my boy,’ the other excused him in the most melancholy manner, ‘Do get on with it!’ Even now only his hand was visible, but by this time Eszter was quite certain what he was doing: as the highest-ranking officer present, he was obliged to sit through the entire interrogation, and being impatient, Eszter decided, he was clearly finding consolation by surveying the nobly painted scene in a half-light that soothed him, while remaining keenly aware that the turn of events that had brought him here was somehow unfair, in which case, thought Eszter, it would be better if his own request were framed concisely, condensed into two or three sentences, and that if it were so framed it would find favour. It wasn’t his fault that things didn’t work out like this, that no amount of circumspection would have elicited a sympathetic hearing, for the three men before him quickly destroyed any hopes he might have harboured by obeying the lieutenant’s invitation and launching into speeches of their own. The very first words they spoke about how they would like ‘to shed new light on the matter’ brought a twitch to the officer’s face as he glanced towards the presidential chair, and so they continued by ‘refuting utterly the slanderous allegations against a town in mourning, allegations made by the man who had himself been responsible for the shameful events’. There was no question but that the circus and its claque comprised an indivisible whole and there wasn’t enough water in the world (screamed Mr Mádai) to wash this filthy band and its crew of bandits clean; it was wicked and pointless trying to fill people’s heads with the ‘whaler’s’ protestations of innocence because there was no fooling these old grey heads, they’d been around a bit, they were made of sterner stuff and could see through ‘a threadbare tissue of lies’. It was a lie, they clamoured over the lieutenant’s forlorn orders (the lieutenant suspected the worst), that they should rely wholly on the facts, a lie, they cut across each other, that this terrible catastrophe was caused by a few disruptive elements in the crowd, since it was clearer than daylight who had launched this infernal attack in the name of the last judgement. Because, in the final analysis, they protested more mysteriously, it was the most awful hogwash to assert that the ‘wicked sorcerer’ played no part in all this (though in the vehemence of their protestations they failed to notice that the occupant of the presidential chair had abandoned his earlier invisibility, stood up and started to stride menacingly towards them) for, in the final analysis, they continued, everyone knew that it wasn’t ‘twenty or thirty hooligans’ but the devil’s own chosen who had stormed the defenceless town, and that there had been countless signs and portents of this in the preceding months. As to details, why, they had plenty of details ‘of water-towers brought down by distant influence, of church clocks that had been stopped for centuries suddenly and spontaneously starting to move again, of trees uprooted all over the district’, announcing in the meantime that they, at least, ‘were ready to do battle with satanic powers’ and offering ‘the support of their weak arms to the regular forces of law and order’. But at this point they ran out of time for the leader of the aforementioned regular forces reached them and bellowed at them with a clarity that even Mr Mádai could understand: ‘Enough of this, you blasted fools! How long, do you think,’ he bent over the retreating and terrified figure of Mr Nadabán, ‘can I bear to put up with this claptrap! Who are you to play havoc with my patience! Ever since dawn I have had to listen to nothing but retarded babble, and you think you can carry on like this with impunity?! To me, who the day before yesterday in Telekgerendas locked every shithead fool up in the asylum?! You think I’ll make an exception of you?! Don’t delude yourselves, I’ll have the whole stinking place behind bars, this filthy hole where every godforsaken idiot behaves as if he were the centre and keeper of the universe, God blast him! Catastrophe! Of course! Last judgement! Horseshit! It’s you that are the catastrophe, you’re the bloody last judgement, your feet don’t even touch the ground, you bunch of sleepwalkers. I wish you were dead, the lot of you. Let’s make a bet,’ and here he shook Nadabán by the shoulders, ‘that you don’t even know what I’m talking about!! Because you don’t talk, you “whisper” or “expostulate”; you don’t walk dow
n the street but “proceed feverishly”; you don’t enter a place but “cross its threshold”, you don’t feel cold or hot, but “find yourselves shivering” or “feeling the sweat pour down you”! I haven’t heard a straight word for hours, you can only mew and caterwaul; because if a hooligan throws a brick through your window you invoke the last judgement, because your brains are addled and filled up with steam, because if someone sticks your nose in shit all you do is sniff, stare and cry “sorcery!” What would really be sorcery, you degenerates, is if someone were to wake you up and you realized that you lived not on the moon but in Hungary, with north at the top and south at the bottom, in a place where Monday is the first day of the week and January the first month of the year! You haven’t the faintest notion of anything, you couldn’t tell a trench mortar from three stacks of air-rifles but go wittering on about “the cataclysm that signals the end of the world”, or some other garbage, and think I have nothing better to do than tramp the roads between Csongrád and Vesztö with two hundred professional soldiers to defend you from a bunch of yobs!!! Look at this specimen,’ said he to the lieutenant, indicating Mr Volent, then pushing his face right into that of his victim. ‘What year is this, eh?! What is the name of the prime minister?! Is the Danube navigable?! Look at him,’ he looked round to the lieutenant, ‘he hasn’t a clue! And they’re all like him, the whole lousy town, this whole leper colony is full of them! Géza, my boy,’ he called, his voice turning indifferent and bitter, ‘drag the circus truck out to the station, pass the matter over to the military tribunal, leave four or five detachments in the square and get rid of these delicate souls, because I just … I just want to be through with it!!!’ The three worthies stood before him as if a bolt from hell had scored a direct hit on them, not breathing, unable to speak a word, and when the colonel turned away they were incapable of moving a muscle; under the circumstances it wasn’t too hard to see that without some outside help none of them could understand what they should do, so the lieutenant pointed decisively at the door and ushered them out of it double quick as if that was all the help they needed and they would somehow make their way home by themselves. Not Eszter though, whose hopes of a favourable hearing had been dashed by the colonel’s unexpected outburst; he didn’t know what to do, to stand or sit, to stay or go. He remained indifferent to anything except the best way of exonerating Valuska, but after all that had happened even a crisp, precise formulation seemed singularly unpromising, so he sat there like someone about to get up and watched as the thick-set, red-faced colonel pulled at his military moustache and, with his exhausted lieutenant in tow, retreated in a huff to the corner where Mrs Eszter stood waiting. There was not a crease in his uniform in that vast hall, and his whole being seemed somehow ironed out, both without and within; his decisive stride, his ramrod-straight back, his obscene but direct manner of speaking combined to produce this effect, this ideal, and he was satisfied with the result as was patently clear from the sound of his voice, that crackling, snappish instrument made to command, with which he now addressed Mrs Eszter. ‘Tell me, madam, how a practical sober woman like you could stand this year after year?’ The question required no answer but you could see that Mrs Eszter, who raised her eyes to the ceiling as if contemplating one, did after all want to say something, something that was fated not to be said because the colonel at this point happened to glance in the direction of the far wall and saw that one of the witnesses had in scandalous fashion succeeded in remaining there, and, with clouded brow, he bellowed at his lieutenant: ‘I told you to get rid of everyone!’ ‘I’d like to make a statement concerning János Valuska,’ said Eszter, rising from his seat, and seeing that the colonel had turned away and crossed his arms, condensed all he had to say in a single sentence, stating quietly: ‘He is wholly innocent.’ ‘What do we know about him?’ the colonel barked impatiently. ‘Was he one of them?’ ‘According to the unanimous testimony of the witnesses, he was,’ the lieutenant answered. ‘He’s still at liberty.’ ‘Military tribunal for him then!’ the colonel retorted, but before he could regard the matter as finished and continue his conversation, Mrs Eszter cut in. ‘Allow me to make a brief comment, colonel.’ ‘My dear lady, you know that you are the only person in this place whose voice I am happy to hear. Excepting my own, of course,’ he added with the most fleeting of smiles to acknowledge the joke, but joined in the loud and raucous laughter that followed and echoed round the walls, as if to signify the company’s astonishment that he, who was the complete master of the situation, should be so eminently capable of dazzling them with not only his self-control but—remarkably—his wit. ‘The person in question,’ said Mrs Eszter, once the laughter had died away, ‘is not accountable’. ‘What do you mean, madam?’ ‘I mean he is mentally deficient.’ ‘In that case,’ the colonel shrugged, ‘I’ll lock him up in the asylum. At least there’s someone I can lock up …’ he added, twirling his moustache with a suppressed smile, thereby alerting the company to the irresistible punchline of another marvellous joke, ‘… though the whole town belongs in the loony-bin …’ Laughter was certain to erupt at this point, and so it did, and as Eszter gazed at them, particularly noting his wife, who had not cast a glance at him, he understood that everything had been decided, that he had no means of persuading the humorous company to a more appropriate evaluation of the facts, so the best thing for him to do was to leave the room and go home. ‘Valuska is alive, that is all that matters …’ he thought and stepped through the door, cutting through the group of locals and military hanging about the entrance, descending the stairs with the fading echo of Mrs Eszter’s and the colonel’s competing gales of laughter in his ears, making his way down the ringing ground-floor corridors of the town hall, and, when he reached the street, trusting to his instinct and automatically turned right towards Árpád Street, so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear when one of the bystanders at the gate, one who had succeeded in overcoming his horror at seeing the picturesque delights of the town in such a ruinous condition, greeted him faintly: ‘Good day, professor, sir …’ Nothing matters, thought Eszter, and probably because he had worn his coat throughout the interrogations in the warm hall started to shiver halfway down Árpád Street. Nothing, he kept saying to himself as he walked, even once he had arrived at his home in Wenckheim Avenue, more by blind instinct and chance than calculation. He opened the gate, shut it after him and fished his key from his pocket, but it seemed that Mrs Harrer, no doubt by design, having taken some thought, had left the door open, and so he put the key back in his pocket, pushed the door open, proceeded down the hall between the rows of bookcases, and, keeping his coat on so he should warm up a bit, settled down on the bed in the drawing room. Then he got up, went back out into the hall, paused a moment in front of one of the bookcases, tilting his head to examine the titles, then went into the kitchen and adjusted a glass by the sink so it shouldn’t be carelessly knocked over. But then he decided not to keep his coat on, so he took it off, took a clothes brush and carefully dusted it down, and once he had finished returned to the drawing room with it, opened the wardrobe, removed a hanger and hung the coat away. He looked at the stove where the embers were still glowing, threw on some kindling in the hope they would catch light, and, since he wasn’t hungry, did not go back into the kitchen to make himself some dinner but decided to wait till later and have a cold meal, which would do perfectly well, he thought. He would like to have known the time, but since he hadn’t wound his wristwatch last night it still showed a quarter past eight, and so, as this had happened to him before, he did what he usually did in such circumstances and consulted the clock on the tower of the evangelical church, but, of course, the boards he had put up prevented him opening the window. So he brought in the axe and pried the planks off, opened the window wide and leaned out; then, glancing now at the tower, now at his watch, he set the latter to the correct time and wound the spring. His eye next fell on the Steinway, and thinking that nothing would calm him as effectively as ‘a bit of Johann
Sebastian’ he sat down to play, not as he had done in recent years, but as ‘Johann Sebastian himself might have done in his day’. But the piano was out of tune, and had to be readjusted to the full Werckmeister harmonic scale, so, opening the lid, he found the tuning key, found the frequency modulator in the cupboard, removed the music stand so that he might be able to get to the keys, rested the modulator in his lap and sat down to work. He was surprised to find that it was much easier in this fashion to retune the instrument than it had been, a few years earlier, to tune it to the Aristoxenus system, but even so it took him a full three hours before every note was where it should be. He grew so absorbed in this that he was only half aware of any extraneous sound, but suddenly, out in the hall, a really loud noise roused him, there was a draft, doors were being slammed, and he seemed to hear Mrs Eszter’s voice shouting: ‘This goes here! And put that down at the end, I’ll put it away later!’ But he was no longer interested, as far as he was concerned they could slam doors and shout at each other ‘till they were blue in the face’: he ran his fingers quickly down the scale to check the pitch once more, then turned to the right page in the score, placed his hand on the pure, consoling keyboard, and struck the first chords of the Prelude in B Major.