For hours he roamed the halls, the stairways, the interior courtyards, he even came across a chapel that opened directly from the palace, then once more upstairs, and once again down, he surveyed every accessible space.
And even though the whole structure stood in ruins, the building even in its mute desolation made you feel that in spite of having been abandoned it still belonged to someone, to some distant world, perhaps to heaven itself, or to the even more distant Lord in the endless distances, in eternity.
He had no business being here.
He could not explain to himself what he felt.
He looked on at all this possessed by a frigid, distinct alienation.
He went in search of water.
A cunningly carved marble fountain stood in each of the interior courtyards, but no water had flowed from them in a very long time. He tried to locate the kitchen, but found nothing. He discovered a passage leading to the cellar which he scoured from one end to the other in case some liquid still sloshed around in the bottom of an abandoned bottle, but no luck. Finally he came outside to the terraced gardens that formed an extension of the longitudinal axis of the building and there he devoured the fruit that had still not withered on the pomegranate trees, that the birds had not picked apart completely, and then he found water as well. A wall of rock rose at the far end of the garden, and there he once more heard the sweet sound of gently trickling water.
He drank his fill, as much as he could stand, and then lay down under the broad boughs of an oleander. Now that he saw the building from the rear, from a fresh angle, he noticed that the different parts of the palace were built upon various levels of the ground and all came together in an open elevated terrace facing him. Sleep overcame him and he woke only when the tinkling of some sort of bell startled him. He regained consciousness at once, but there was no reason for alarm: it was only a flock of sheep approaching, slowly, very slowly from somewhere lower down, peacefully grazing their way uphill, from the direction of Redondo. He waited for some time under the oleander, but the flock had strayed all this way unshepherded.
The sun was no longer blazing, in another minute the nearby mountain crest would block its light.
He climbed up to the elevated terrace. Approaching it from the side proved to be child’s play, the rear of the building was braced against the rocky cliff. It took only a few strides, left foot here, the right over there, and he was up on the terrace.
Broad, spacious, and open in all directions, the terrace rested upon stone pillars. Running around its perimeter was a hefty, nearly a half-meter thick, stone balustrade formerly clad in tiles, and this balustrade on each of its three sides had a bench recessed into it. He sat down on the central bench, settling into a comfortable pose, leaning on his left arm. In front of him the landscape stretched away in the direction of Redondo down below.
The lazy and tranquil landscape completely filled the panorama, all the way to the horizon.
A world so wide could not possibly exist.
He heard birds twittering, and the bellwether of the flock.
In front of him, down below, the incredible expanse of forest stretched away; there was infinite calm all around, above the woods the vast sky’s vault, and in his ears the twitter of birds and tinkling of bells—and it all grew quieter, and more and more peaceful.
One after the other the birds flew home to their nests.
The sun began to set.
Peace reigned over the land, and this peace was so deep that Pedro, as he sat there contemplating it, now remembered the line at the quarry, where he should perhaps still be standing even now, and this made him think of his wheelbarrow, and how when he had to bend down to grab the grooved rubber lining of the handles, even through the work gloves he could still recognize his wheelbarrow among a thousand others.
Yes, he could.
He climbed down from the terrace, walked through the gardens to the path, and from there down to 381, and set out toward Estremoz.
And although the sun went down, and darkness fell, there was always some light left for him to see where he stepped.
On the way back the trip was shorter.
GYÖRGY FEHÉR’S HENRIK MOLNÁR
In 2002, the year of his death—I no longer remember the exact date, not even the month, but it was sometime in the spring—the film director György Fehér phoned me from Budapest to say that he had a project he’d been lugging around in his baggage, a film project, as a matter of fact this was the only thing he had really wanted to do in his life, but it was a very complicated matter, he would prefer to discuss it in person. In the course of recent years I had grown to like him more and more, and just around that time this affection was at its peak, and so I was prepared to meet with him whenever. I don’t yet know when I’ll come, he said, I’ll let you know beforehand, but in the meantime I’m sending you a cassette in advance, he said, a documentary film, sort of, so that you’ll have some idea what this is about. It was such a long time ago when I shot this footage, it must have been sometime in the late sixties, I’m not even sure any more if it actually happened, he added. I can barely recall the circumstances now. At the time I worked as a cameraman for the state TV station, they sent us out to document a trial, but it turned out to be a fiasco, the whole project was dropped and this is the only copy that survived, purely by accident. But if you take a look at it you’ll see there is something there. Perhaps originally they’d planned it for a news program, a segment about the trial, edited of course—I no longer recall. And of course they never used it for anything, and no one ever went near it. This cassette is the only existing copy, the original was lost. So this is what our film should be based on.
I was really surprised. The two of us? Make a film? Of all people he ought to have known better than anyone how much I disliked making films. Furthermore whenever—before he launched into a film, or during a shoot and between shoots—I brought up my dislike and the reasons for it, he always replied that he believed me and understood that I hated the whole process, but I must understand that no one hated it any more than he did himself.
He had given many signs of nurturing friendly feelings toward me, possibly because in those days I was considered to be the greatest simpleton in the entire Hungarian film industry. Whenever we spoke, whenever he looked at me, or happened to be present to hear what I had to say before, during, and between various film shoots, he always had a strange little light flickering in his eyes, a flicker of fascination, of disbelief: how could anyone be so utterly clueless about where he was and what was he doing here, in the first place, with film people. We met more and more often, and I could feel that behind his sympathy there lurked a curiosity to find out, to see for himself once and for all whether I was really as half-assed as I appeared to be. He spoke to me about his favorite writers and his favorite literary works, but never said a word about working with me. To make a film with me? I was certain that he would never want to take advantage of my half-assedness, not to mention that I was convinced he was one of those few who knew my secret: I hadn’t the slightest clue about film and filmmaking. He assured me that he hadn’t either.
Anyhow, I lapsed into dumbfounded silence. “A film, did you hear me?” he resumed. “Just you and me . . .” He spoke the words emphatically. “It occurred to me that after all these years you and I could do something together.” “And just what did you have in mind exactly? What kind of film do you intend to make?” I inquired. “Ah well, you know . . . a film,” he replied in the slightly affectless voice he used whenever he found a strange question amusing. What kind of film, he asks?! Well, a film. There is only one kind of film—that was the sort of thing implied by the lack of affect in his voice. “Anyway, why don’t you take a look at the cassette,” he added. “See if you can think of something. I’ll mail it tomorrow.”
He said goodbye, hung up, and I never saw him alive again.
After his funeral
I ran into several people who had been at the graveside. We realized that we all shared a deep affection for the deceased. Sometime later one of these people told me that not long before his death Gyuri had contacted him and asked, as a sort of last request, for his help in working together, just the two of them, to make a film. Gyuri told this person that he would send a cassette. And what do you know, the cassette never arrived, this person now told me. Subsequently I came across another fellow, and after we had a few glasses of wine it turned out that both of us had our own little stories about Gyuri, so he motioned me to lean closer and in a lowered voice narrated how Gyuri’s last wish was to make a very special film exclusively with him. Just you and me, he told me, this fellow went on, that was what Gyuri had supposedly told him. Finally a third such person popped up in my life, with the same story, the same waggish reality so typically Fehér, and this too ended the same way, the promised cassette never materialized.
I refrained from disclosing that I was also involved in the affair. And I certainly did not reveal the fact that I, on the other hand, did receive the cassette.
I have a distinct memory of the occasion: instead of leaving it in my mailbox the mailman had brought it to the door of my apartment. I took the cassette inside, placed it in the VHS player, watched it to the end, then watched it again.
Next I took pen and paper and wrote an old-fashioned handwritten letter to my friend. After I was finished with it I placed it in an envelope, sealed it, affixed a stamp, and mailed it to his mother’s address, since he never had a mailing address of his own.
Dear Gyuri!
I see the camera jiggling in your hands, as with your eyes glued to the door of the courtroom you are angling for the suitable momentum with which to zoom in on him the instant he enters, although I can also tell from the way that camera is jumping around that you will not be able to predict just who will be entering next, and that is what happens, your hands make a mistake, for the camera leaps at someone who enters ahead of the awaited one, and you track him for a bit, this person of no interest whatsoever, but the hand holding the camera already knows that this was not the right one, and quickly abandons him, both the camera and the hand holding it are rather abashed, one senses this as the camera slinks back to the entrance, sort of admitting that it does not know its business—the camera is not the right one for this job, it is too much of an EVERYDAY CAMERA—the whole thing is rather like the devil playing a little prank in order to demonstrate that although he is not the rightful director here, in any case HE TOO WILL BE PRESENT . . . then abruptly the scene turns serious, because the one we have been waiting for now enters, he is unmistakably the one, not even this everyday camera can mistake him, the camera trembles in your hands, it trembles because the moment the man entered the courtroom the camera, too, entered reality, moreover a reality where an extraordinarily important case, one of reality’s truly dreadful stories, is about to unfold. Not merely a story that is part of reality, but one that would reveal what that reality, in point of fact, is.
I lean forward to watch the VHS image, and the first thing I note is that something is not quite right about the way he thrusts his hands forward. At a superficial glance, it seems perfectly natural that a person being led somewhere with his hands cuffed in front would, in order not to stumble as he advances, thrust out his hands somewhat forward and up, in order to see where he is stepping, and as a matter of fact this is what he is doing, thrusting his hands forward and up as he enters the courtroom without slowing down at the threshold, behind him guards on each side hold him by the arms, directing him. Making his way through the people standing near the door, he enters the courtroom, tilting his head forward slightly, to see where he is stepping—I already realize at the moment of his entrance, the way he is holding his manacled hands up ahead of him, tilting his head down slightly to see where he is stepping, that he is giving us early notice that the main point here is not that the handcuffs on him are an injustice in the legalistic sense, but that the greatest injustice here is that any legalistic sense exists in the first place, for in his case the matter does not have a legalistic sense, his case is not a legalistic case, he is not “indictable,” since he is only a man fallen into the most primitive sort of trap about which here, today, it is impossible to say a word, there is no one to speak to; the one and only person—every move he makes conveys this—the sole individual in this courtroom who is his equal is he himself, and underneath his formidable discipline one can sense his terrible fragility, that he is handcuffed, that he is alone, that it is scandalous that no one else wears handcuffs in this courtroom, for in this manner the whole thing has the appearance of a chained animal being led here, I watch him advance with rapid steps, he knows precisely where he’s heading, knows more precisely than anyone else where he has to go, and why; directly behind him are the two guards, his look is shut off, it is not possible to have a more shut-off look, I can see his terrible defenselessness, the way he takes his seat, the way he holds his hands out to one of the guards to unlock the handcuffs, I note the precise movement, he knows exactly what the guard must do, the way he turns the handcuffs up with the lock toward the guard, all this makes everything clear, and I can’t help but watch as the handcuffs snap open, and the way now with hands freed—very different from a moment earlier, when he had still been handcuffed!—he plants himself on his chair, and you can see how disciplined, how focused he is, he doesn’t look around, but looks once to the right, once to the left, and at the end, when you can hear someone entering on the judge’s platform facing him, I see him glancing up, actually this is the first time that I see his gaze, I see his eyes as he regards the judge.
Good Lord, I know that glance from somewhere!
The judge’s voice, harsh and rigid with antagonism and indifference, tells me with deadly certainty that this is not a trial, nothing will be decided here, this is a horrendous travesty, with actors who are in their way perfect for their roles; he knows—hearing the judge’s voice, especially in places where he recites file numbers, dates, refers to transcripts from former hearings, in other words, the exhibits—that all is preordained here from the very first, and no one knows this better than the prisoner himself, whom from here the camera in your hands will never leave, or only for a moment, as if your clumsiness had compelled you to stay glued to his face, to his gaze, as when one simply CANNOT TAKE ONE’S EYES AWAY from something, this explains the viewer’s strange feeling that he is one with the camera, just as clumsy, just as mesmerized, just as incapable of believing his own eyes, of comprehending how it could have happened, whatever happened, as is the camera, through which he is now seeing this; for I cannot believe my eyes, that here sits this handsome, intelligent, fragile, exceptionally sensitive man, steeped in this superhuman concentration, and I am looking on helplessly while it will happen to him! What that will be of course I cannot know at the outset, and because of the extraordinary clumsiness of the hands holding the camera I can only gradually and with difficulty begin to understand the story, and while piece by piece I try to solve the mystery, as piece by piece I try to assemble from the heard fragments what in fact the accused has done, and what came before and what followed later, as all this is going down inside me while I watch the horribly inward gaze of the prisoner—for I cannot do otherwise, since you do not give me anything else!—I must also keep thinking about how is such clumsiness possible, how is it possible that now the audio, now the video keeps failing, what is going on here, how is it possible that something is always going wrong, one thing after another, and again and again, and at times I am outraged, this simply cannot be true! you’re doing this on purpose, precisely now, when I want to hear or see this or that, oh yes, I must keep thinking this, why this clumsiness, why this constant error behind the camera, I must wonder who the hell is operating that camera, who can possibly be so unaware of technique, or if he isn’t then why was such a defective camera placed in his hands—then after a while I decide to reject this lin
e of thought, and I am impelled to think that no, on the contrary, the crew on this shoot are doing their best, they are honest, decent folk who are doing everything humanly imaginable within their power, but the camera, the machine, simply keeps malfunctioning, they are utterly helpless, it is not a matter of their being careless, or irresponsible, or their playing around with the camera, but simply that there is no other alternative, and what is going on here is a struggle against helplessness, an extraordinary trial is in progress that must be documented, otherwise the world would fall to pieces, documented, while constantly being sabotaged by the equipment on hand, so that this is a battle between the crew and the camera, a battle between the camera and the world, I can practically envision it in front of me, even as I watch the face of the prisoner, all of you out there, the cameraman, the man who does the lighting, and the director, all trying to communicate by means of mute gestures, first one, then another pokes in exasperation at some part of the camera, trying to point out to the other what to do in order to restore the absent audio or the vanished video, I catch myself paying at least as much attention to this imagined dumb show as to the ongoing event itself, only to have every such imaginary intermezzo one after another wiped out by some new fact that is heard just then, a fact that lets me understand something about the events that had transpired, a fact that slowly, step by step, acquaints me with what had happened in the past and what is happening now.
That murders were committed.
And that they intend to kill a man here.
This first trial session has throughout possessed its own internal momentum, as well as its internal pace, so that I, the viewer nailed to the prisoner’s gaze, steadily sink deeper and deeper into his story. It becomes increasingly obvious that the charges alleging that this man had committed murder are absurd, that the forces opposing the defendant (this judge, these jurors, the two guards, all these people here) are every last one of them despicable, murderous scoundrels whose greatest crime is not that they brought this unfortunate man to this pass, but the fact that THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND HIM.
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