“So, tell me now,” the pianist said, slapping his thigh, “what else did you have?”
“Cold sirloin of beef, a peach, wine, chocolate,” Köves recited, and both of them doubled up with laughter, so that even Köves had the feeling he was giving voice to distant fantasies, and childish ones at that, which were of no use at all other than for giving the grown-ups something to laugh about for a few minutes.
A bit later, however, the pianist again became long-faced; it seemed as if, behind the cheerfully glib words, he had continued to be preoccupied with disquieting thoughts, and he made ever more frequent references to his occupation and the nightclub, especially after Köves had remarked that it must be great to be an instrumentalist: he, Köves, supposed that a musician’s life was a truly splendid, independent life, all it required was the talent for it, but that was something that he, Köves, sadly did not have.
It seemed, though, that he had said the wrong thing, because to all intents and purposes the pianist took offence:
“I’m well aware what you people think of me,” he said, as if Köves belonged to a large circle of some kind who were all his adversaries: “He,” and here he obviously meant himself, “he has it easy! He’s got a good thing going for him! He plonks away a bit on the piano every evening, croons into a microphone, pockets the tips, and that’s your lot!.. Huh!” he gave an indignant laugh, so to say, to behold such ignorance.
“And it isn’t?’ Köves wished to know.
“How would it be?’ the pianist burst out. “In a place where whiskey is also being purveyed!”
“Why?” Köves asked. “Shouldn’t it be?”
“Most certainly!” the pianist said. “But I ask you … Or rather not I, because it’s of no interest to me, but …” The pianist now looked a bit flustered, as if he had become trapped in a sentence that could not be continued, and out of the shadow of the branches arching over his head he cast a swift glance at Köves, seated in the glimmering of the starry sky, before, having palpably calmed down on the one hand, but ever more agitatedly on the other, he carried on: “So anyway, as to who drinks the whiskey … what pays for it?! And why whiskey, of all things?!”
Köves responded that he was in no position to know.
“And you think I ought to?!” the pianist heatedly rejoined, so Köves deemed it advisable to hold his peace, because it seemed to him that whatever he might say, right now it would only nettle him.
As it was, the pianist quickly calmed down:
“Right, let’s have a slug!” He raised the bottle in Köves’s direction.
The cheerfulness was restored for only a brief period, however:
“Then there’s the numbers …” He fretted some more.
Köves had the feeling that this time he was only expecting to be prompted:
“What numbers?” he lent a helping hand.
“The ones I’m not supposed to play,” the pianist replied straightaway, in a slightly plaintive tone.
“Banned numbers?” Köves pumped him some more.
“What do you mean, ‘banned’?!” the pianist protested. If only they were, he explained, then he would not get the headaches either. What was banned was banned, a clear-cut matter: it was there on the list, and he wouldn’t play it for any money. Except that there were other numbers, he continued, which were, how should he put it, tricky numbers; numbers which did not appear on any lists, so nobody could claim they were banned numbers; but then it was still not advisable to play them — and of course, they were the ones requested by most of the guests.
“Now, what can I say to them? That they’re banned?” he posed the question, obviously not to Köves, but then it nevertheless seemed as though it were to him. “That would be slanderous, wouldn’t it, even worse than my just playing them!” he went on to answer that himself. “How can I say a musical number is banned when, on the contrary, it is permitted, just tricky, and thus undesirable — though one cannot say even that about it, because if it were undesirable, then it would be banned …”
The pianist relapsed into a troubled silence, clearly rejecting the solution that, on the basis of what he heard, Köves too had to regard as inexpedient, but otherwise he accompanied the pianist’s words with much nodding, feeling that he was hearing about interesting things, and even if he could not understand him in every respect, of course, he found that what the pianist was saying was nevertheless not entirely unfamiliar.
“Or,” he levelled a fresh question at Köves, “am I to tell them that I don’t know the number?”
Köves, tiring a bit by this point, felt it made a certain sense.
“But then what kind of pianist does that make me?” The pianist gazed reproachfully at Köves, and Köves conceded that, to be sure, he had not taken that objection into consideration. “I’m renowned,” the pianist complained, or at least it sounded as if he were complaining, “for knowing every number in the book. That’s what I make a living from, and I don’t just make a living from it: I really do know every number in the book, I …,” and at this point the pianist looked disconcerted, as if he did not know how he should express sentiments that he maybe did not wish to express in full. “So anyway,” he carried on, “I won’t budge on that. You could ask me why.…” He glanced at Köves, but Köves didn’t ask anything. “Even so, the only answer I have is that I won’t give an inch.” For a while he sat mutely beside Köves, presumably deliberating. “I won’t let my good name be besmirched!” he announced abruptly, almost angrily, as it were against his better judgement. “Ah!” he then let fling. “How would you people know what it is like when an evening comes to the end, the low lighting is turned off, I shut the lid of the piano, and I start to ruminate about what numbers I have played, and who requested them, who was sitting at the tables, and who could that unknown chap be who …” The pianist fell silent, and for a long time he said no more, so Köves could only guess that he might be occupied with what he had just referred to as “ruminating.”
As time passed, however, he seemed to forget that, too, and the good humour returned; yet the earlier weariness descended afresh on Köves’s senses. The last words that he believed he heard were the following: “Don’t ever feel embarrassed, old friend, just lay your head on my shoulder. If you want, I’ll even hum a lullaby into your ear”—and maybe it was not the pianist who said them but Köves who dreamed them, because by then he was asleep.
Daybreak. Motor trucks. Köves speaks his mind
So, Köves was still — or again — sitting there, and the fire of the last drop of the pianist’s drink was coursing beneficially through his veins.
“How long are we going to stay?” he asked, to which the pianist tersely said no more than:
“Not long now,” though he seemed in the meantime to be paying Köves hardly any attention. In the nascent light, Köves was now readily able to distinguish his slack and yet lively face: a new expression was displayed on that face — an expression which was abstracted yet at the same time uneasy. The ponderous body also shifted, with its limbs as it were rearranging themselves: the trunk which up till then had been turned toward Köves, was now leaning back; the feet, which had been slipped into shiny patent-leather shoes with old-fashioned pointed toes, were stretched out before him; the arms were outspread on the back of the seat — so long were his arms that one hand was dangling behind Köves from the end of the seat back — and he was visibly concentrating his whole attention on the street, as if he were awaiting someone who ought to be coming into view any time now. And Köves was assailed by a feeling — again an absurd feeling, just like he’d had the previous evening at the airport — that he too had been waiting all along, and was waiting now, for the same thing that the pianist was waiting for, even though he did not know, of course, precisely what it was they were waiting for, indeed, even whether they were waiting for anything at all in the first place.