The Melancholy of Resistance

by Krasznahorkai, László

  Yes, ma’am [the man cleared his throat], it made a big enough stink, you could smell it a mile away, I should say. But we weren’t no part of it, not till we heard in the Nile that there was a bit of a ruckus in town, so I say to the others, to Gyömrö and Feri Holger, right fellas, your country needs you, we’ll soon knock some sense into them. ‘Cause we’re known, ma’am [madam secretary, Harrer corrected him], I mean madam secretary, as the heavy brigade, because, to be honest with you, the three of us, how should I put it … well, you know, when we get bored we go and sort a few things out and people are a bit scared of us, I mean they avoid us like the plague, ‘cause whenever we look up from our beers the place goes quiet, if you know what I mean. No, but all this was small shit compared to what was going on when we got to the High Street, just where it meets the main road, and I told Gyömrö, come on, man, get a move on, ‘cause I’m not joking, this lot will leave nothing for us to do, and so, no point denying it, we got stuck in too. But then there was a big flair up because just as we’d started beating up a few guys, we saw this was another kind of stunt altogether, this lot are picking on civilians, so I say to Feri Holger, coffee-break guys, and he carefully lays two patients down, comes over and Gyömrö too, and we put our heads together and work out what we should do. But there’s a great crowd there by this time, all come down from the market square like the Russian army or something, so I say, OK, fellows, it looks like revolution, time to get out of here. But Gyömrö, he says, as far as he can remember the shops used to open up at such times, and the poor could help themselves, so we should go and see, ‘cause, I mean, there’s this little grocer’s nearby, full of excellent booze, let’s go see if it’s open today, then we can take off. Well, it really was open, but it wasn’t us that smashed the locks in, madam secretary, the door was in godamned splinters when we arrived, we just went in ‘cause it was open and tried to save a few bottles, but the guys before us had made such a job of it, we couldn’t find a single one that hadn’t been broken. We got a bit annoyed at that ‘cause we thought it wasn’t right, I mean here we were, all this godamned liberty and freedom for everyone, scratching around the place, dry as a bone, and I’m telling you, I swear by my dear mother [he put his hand on his heart], we didn’t want nothing, just a sip or two, then off home, ‘cause me, I like a bit of a fight, I put myself out a bit, if you see what I mean, but we had nothing to do with what was going on then, and generally I like things quiet, and that’s why I think I’d make a good policeman, and you, Vulture, you hold your trap [he addressed the clucking Harrer], you got enough to answer for … Anyway, off we go, we look at the club—nothing; we call in at the bar in the High Street—that’s smashed up too, so we think to ourselves, not much glory here, fellows, let’s try further out. So we go to whatsitsname, the Cowherd, but then Feri Holger perks up and say he knows somewhere down Friars’ Walk, one of those soda shops, and there, I got to be honest with you, we did break the door down. We didn’t do nothing, just looked in the store at the back and found a few foreign liqueur things, and we looked at the labels, and they seemed all right. I know, I know [he nodded at Mrs Eszter], I’m coming to the point, ‘cause this was the thing, you see, that led to real trouble, ‘cause we weren’t used to that foreign stuff and God, we felt so weird after we drunk it, I swore then I’d never touch another drop of it. ’Cause soon after that a bunch of the guys turn up with iron bars and they start smashing everything up, and I say to one, gimme one of those, what I mean to say is I admit it, we joined in pretty much. But don’t you start thinking I’m usually like that, madam secretary; it was that fucking booze did me head in, and even then, looking back on it, I don’t think we did too much damage, a mirror and a few glasses on the bar as I remember, nothing to merit a real beating … I told you to keep your trap shut, Vulture [he silenced Harrer once again], I’ll pay the cost of that mirror or whatever, if it’s going to be such a big thing to the fucking owner. I dunno what they fucking put into that fucking booze (pardon my language), but I was out for hours, I didn’t know where I was or what was what, then suddenly I see I’m sitting on the pavement, in front of the Komló, and the cold is killing me. I look around and I see the cinema is burning and the flames are already so high [he gestured upwards] and I say to myself, things are getting a bit serious here. I dunno how I got there or where the hell Gyömrö or Feri Holger have sauntered off to, I mean I couldn’t tell you if you was to torture me, I just mingled with the other lads, I simply didn’t click [the candidate reddened in fury] what the fuck was happening!! I felt godamned awful, I tell you, I stood there, my stomach and liver burning up, with the burning cinema there in front of me, and to be honest, I really believed, like a fucking idiot, that it was me that set it alight, ‘cause, God help me, I couldn’t remember a thing, I’d no idea what I’d been up to, I just stared at the flames thinking: was it me? or wasn’t it? and I really had no idea what to do. ‘Cause I couldn’t go till I was sure, and I didn’t know whether it was or wasn’t me that done it, I mean I know now, but then I didn’t, so eventually I say to myself, this is it, you really had better get out of here now … So I go through the German Quarter, lots of little streets, God knows what, so that I shouldn’t meet the people I just left all over again, and I stop for a breather by the gates of the cemetery, leaning up against the bars like this [he showed them], and suddenly there’s someone talking behind me. Well, fuck me, pardon my language, they’ve come for me too, I don’t usually run like a scared rabbit, you can see that by looking at me, madam secretary, but I got so scared, someone speaking to me in the silence like that. ‘Course, it was only one of the guys from the fight who knew it was time to blow, and he says, let’s change coats and I’ll go down the street and you go up it, that way we’ll throw them off, so I say, fine, let’s swap. But there was something about the guy that started bothering me, so I say to him, listen! I wouldn’t like it if this coat meant trouble, know what I mean, ‘cause don’t think for a second I’m gonna answer for what you done! A cheap shit, he was, I mean it was just a grey cloth coat but God knows what he did while it was on him, so I say, I’ve changed my mind, find someone else to swap with and let’s drop the subject. I didn’t see a thing he was so lightning fast, the fucker, and I trusted him, thinking he really was a pal. He stabbed me just under my shoulder blade, here [he unbuttoned his shirt and showed the place], though you can bet your sweet life, madam secretary, it was the heart he was after. But he did me, the shit, I was flat on the street, and by the time I woke up, the wound was hurting like hell, and the cold was killing me again. No wonder and all, ‘cause I had no coat on me, it was gone with everything that was in it—ID, cash, keys—and the fucking grey cloth coat lying there beside me on the ground, so what, in God’s name I ask you, could I do, I put it on, then full speed into the cemetery. ’Cause I was sure the guy had done something pretty heavy and I wasn’t so stupid as to be caught on account of a coat, but I had to put something on or I’d have frozen stiff in that cold, and I thought I was best going through the cemetery. I didn’t dare go home on account of the cinema, I didn’t have an ounce of sense left in me ‘cause of that, and what with the wound and the blood and the pain, you understand, I didn’t have no strength to make it out of town, so, in a word, I stayed there. I found an open crypt, respect due and all that, gathered a bit of wood at the end of the cemetery, and made a fire best as I could, staunching the blood with my vest, and waited for night. I could have bled to death there, madam secretary, but I’ve got a good constitution, so I could hold out that long, and then eventually, I snuck home, and seeing as I didn’t have the key I had to wake the old woman to let me in, and soon as I shut the door behind me, what with no ID, no cash, no nothing, I burned the fucking coat to a cinder. Then fetch the doctor, on the double, there’s one nearby, get bandaged up, take some pills, three days on me back then … well … I dunno, madam secretary, that’s all there is to it, I’ve left nothing out, that’s all I done wrong apart from a few fights in the past … I dunno
how you see it, I mean whether, what with my record, I could still be a policeman, but when Vulture came round to see if I felt like volunteering, provided I told you everything dead straight, I thought … yeah, I’ll volunteer … ‘cause, me, I think I could be a useful member of society, though I dunno what you think about this couple of mistakes I made, I mean, well …

  … well, Mrs Eszter shook her head for some time, humming to herself and staring sternly at the table, and eventually said, yes, yes … pursed her lips, continued humming, then, finally, drummed a brisk little tattoo on the table with her fingers, looked the candidate—who seemed at the point of collapse—up and down a few times, and then, by way of conclusion, mumbled, almost to herself, ‘I’d like to see the man who can sweep this under the carpet,’ then looked as though she was ready to administer the coup de grâce. The problem, she confessed to Harrer, over the head of the candidate so to speak, was far more serious than she had been led to believe, for, ‘after all’, she was seeking men of unimpeachable character, and though one might describe the present candidate as a troublemaker, loiterer, burglar, desecrator of graves, in fact as many things, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to describe him as—and here she flashed a smile at Harrer alone—precisely unimpeachable. She, for her part, would not wish to cast doubts on his sincerity, but, she sighed, still keeping her eyes on Harrer, there really was ‘precious little’ here to work on, so she didn’t know whether, in all conscience, she could assume responsibility for him, but if she did, that is after consultation with ‘an appropriate specialist’, she could be pretty certain that the best she could offer was a ‘maximum probationary period’. ‘Probationary … ?’ the would-be officer of the law swallowed and looked to Harrer for some explanation as to what that might entail, or if nothing else for a simple dictionary definition of the word, but the latter was not about to embark on any kind of exposition for at this point the secretary glanced at her watch and gave a brief right-handed wave to her right-hand man to signal that he should ‘clear the room’ since she had to leave very soon. Harrer dragged the confused and terrified recruit through the door (you could hear him being admonished in the hall: ‘Don’t you understand? She’s taken you on, stop struggling, you lunk!’), while Mrs Eszter stood up, folded her arms under her breasts and, following her new habit, looked out of the window ‘to take stock of the world’, thinking to herself that, well, this was only a first step, but ‘at least we’re heading in the right direction with big lunks like him’, it was part of planning for the future, the foundations on which she would build and succeed, for by the time they had appointed a new chief (she waved to the chauffeur waiting by the car), he would be greeted by a competent, indeed potent force, heavily staffed by people who were eternally obliged to the secretary. Those were the stakes, she reflected, as she donned her leather coat and clicked the steel press-studs into place one after another: these were necessary precautions, carefully considered and, above all, soberly thought out, precautions that ‘wouldn’t collapse like silly little daydreams but were built on what lay solidly to hand’. For indeed, what else mattered—she checked her handbag again—but fitness for the job, and the most important thing was never to ‘yield’ to illusions, such as ‘people meant well or that there was a benevolent God or some kind of force for good in charge of human affairs’, which were generally clap-trap and lies of the most lethal sort (she stepped out into the hall) that she, for one, was ‘not prepared to swallow’; and as for ‘beauty’, ‘fellow feeling’ and ‘the good inside us all’, please! she puffed out her cheeks at the mention of each one, or even if she wanted to wax particularly lyrical, the best she could say was that society was (she passed through the gate) ‘a foul marsh of petty self-interest’. A marsh, she pulled a face and occupied the forward rear seat of the black Volga: a marsh where the wind bent the reeds, the wind, in this case, being her; and so she waited for Harrer to get in the front door, and, once he did so, said simply, ‘Let’s go!’ then leaned back comfortably in the yellow mock-leather padded seat and watched the houses as they swept by. She watched the houses, though now that most people capable of walking had made their way to the cemetery there were only a few industrious citizens in the street, and, as always when she sat in the car at that point of ‘mobile command’, full of the inimitable magic sensation of ‘sweeping by’, she could see with maximum clarity—like some landowner driving about his estate—that this really was all hers, potentially hers, for the plans to make it hers were in place, and until then, she smiled through the window of the Volga, ‘you can work all you like with your wheelbarrows and pickaxes, because we’ll soon make a start on your souls …’ Even Harrer did not know that the TIDY YARD … epithet represented only the first stage of the movement, and that the ORDERLY HOUSE part—and here the car turned from St Stephen’s Road into the Central Cemetery—was something that would follow only after the streets and gardens were tidy and ‘you could eat off those pavements’, when the committee for competition would make a complete tour of every house and she would hand out numerous prizes of her own (prizes that would outstrip those of the ORDERLY HOUSE committee) for ‘the simplest and most functional lifestyle’. But we mustn’t run ahead of ourselves, Mrs Eszter admonished herself, we must concentrate on what lies immediately before us—the burial, for example, she thought as she sat in the Volga and took stock of the vast crowd gathered before the catafalque, so that there should be no hitches on this highly significant occasion when ‘everything should go like clockwork’, since this was her first opportunity to address the crowd who longed for renewal and for congress with its leader, this, this would mark her first ‘proper’ public appearance, the first chance she had of proclaiming their ‘unity’. Now we’ll see whether we are worthy of people’s confidence, she cautioned Harrer, then stepped from the car and, with her customary decisive stride, set out for the catafalque through the crowd that immediately opened before her, then, having reached it, positioned herself at the head of the coffin, tapped the microphone a couple of times to make sure it was working, and, as a last gesture, sternly surveyed the scene before reassuring herself that her right-hand man had made a thoroughly competent job of the funeral arrangements. The orders she had given three days ago stipulated that the funeral service should express the spirit of the new age, which meant dispensing not only with the Church’s presence but with ‘all the usual saccharine appurtenances’; Harrer should junk all the ‘redundant trash’ and ‘give the whole a social character’, as indeed he had done; she nodded to the stage-struck producer in acknowledgement, surveying the unplaned coffin as it rested on a simple but well-polished butcher’s block beside a small open red box (its inscription, ‘For outstanding sporting progress’, hidden of course) which served to display the ‘posthumously awarded’ medal that marked the status of the departed, and, instead of the usual candelabra—a little startling perhaps but effective—two men who used to be Harrer’s assistants, who, for lack of time, had now been fitted out as hussars and carried two great plastic broadswords (borrowed from the local costume shop) in their firm hands, the purpose of which was graphically to remind the crowd of the reason they had gathered here, which was to bury an exemplary and heroic figure. She surveyed the coffin with Mrs Plauf inside it and, while the assembly quieted down and realized that things were ‘about to start’, contemplated the memory of her—she could say it now—‘pre-revolutionary’ visit. Who would have thought then, she asked herself, that just over a fortnight later this ‘little dumpling’ would, by her agency, be beatified as an exemplary hero; who would have thought that night when she left the suffocatingly cosy flat in such a temper that just sixteen days later such an idea might even occur to her, that she should be standing here by the coffin, no longer angry, on the contrary—no point denying it—when she recalled the figure of Mrs Plauf and her idiotic ways, she really felt rather sorry for her. Though whatever happened to her, she meditated on the catafalque, was chiefly her own fault for not being able to bear the disgrace,
as her neighbour described it, and setting out to drag her son through the street by his hair after dark, setting out at that time simply, as luck would have it, to bump into some brigand who was just in the process of disguising himself, and who—according to the witnesses cowering behind their curtains in Karácsony János Street—‘dedicated’ five minutes of his precious time to ‘amusing himself with her’ in the lowest way possible before ‘silencing’ her. It was a personal tragedy, she decided with a sad face, tough luck, a truly tragic turn of events at the end of a ‘sheltered life’, since she, after all, was the last person to deserve such a fate, not having laid herself open to it, but at least, she reflected as she took leave of her, she is getting a hero’s send-off, and at this point she snapped open her handbag, took out the typed copy of the speech, and, seeing that she had everyone’s complete attention, took a deep breath. But just as she was doing so, owing to some muddle over the arrangements, four more hussars appeared from behind her back and, before she could interrupt them, took two planks cut to size, slipped them under the coffin, raised it and, following their instructions, started off with it in the direction of the crowd of mourners, who, having grown accustomed to unusual procedures, immediately and without any question, made way for them. She cast a withering glance at the deeply flushed Harrer, who stood as if rooted to the spot, but it was no use: if this was the way things were then there was nothing to be done but set off after the four hussars, who were cleaving their way through the startled crowd towards the freshly prepared grave with enormous gusto, clearly delighted that it should have been they, the physically strong, to whom Mrs Plauf was lighter than a feather, who had been chosen for this momentous task. It wasn’t only the speaker who was obliged to keep step with them, but, if they did not wish to be left behind, the whole assembly too, and, what was more, in order to maintain a modicum of dignity, everyone had somehow to disguise the fact that they were ‘practically running’—though this proved to be the least of their troubles, for the real problem was with the coffin itself, the hussars, despite numerous low whistles and whispered warnings, jauntily continued swishing along, oblivious of the fact that it too was tossing and bouncing in a jaunty, though rather more dangerous, fashion. Gasping and choking, they arrived at the grave with commendable dignity in the circumstances, and ‘it would be no understatement to say’ that everyone was much relieved to see that the coffin was still intact, and if nothing else, the strangeness of this ‘last journey’, accompanied by continuous whispering, had engendered a real fellow feeling among them, ready as they were to take their last farewells, so that everybody there was wholly intent on Mrs Eszter as she finally launched into her speech, holding two fluttering sheets of paper in her hand.