So, he shifted his position, he too stretched out comfortably, lounging as if he were at home, so their arms were entwined, although they, like animals squeezed into a refuge, may not even have noticed this. Perhaps because his eyes had adjusted to it, but perhaps because his viewpoint had altered in the meantime, Köves did not judge the square as being so woeful now as he had done at night. The one thing that bothered him a little was a black firewall which was standing solitarily, looking as if a hurricane had blown the rest of the house away from it. Farther off extended a broad thoroughfare that Köves fancied he recognized, though in all probability this was a trick of the still uncertain light, because on closer inspection it proved not to be the street he had recognized, or at least that his eyes and his feet were used to. From that direction movement and scraps of sound drew Köves’s attention to them: people were gathering in front of a pulled-down iron roll-shutter, mainly women, still in make-do clothing, sloppy, their heads bound in curlers. So they’ve started queuing up this early: no doubt it’s for milk, thought Köves, seeing the cans and bottles that were dangling from the hands. From another direction there suddenly appeared hurrying, sullen-browed passers-by, so many silent reproaches as far as Köves was concerned; whether lugging bags or swinging empty hands, they were heading to wherever it was that for some reason — presumably obvious to them — they needed to be present. With heavy clattering, boxed-shaped trams began carrying their as yet sparse human cargoes hither and thither; cars whisked by, and Köves stared at them in bafflement at first, but before long he grew accustomed to their angular, cumbersome shapes. With a loud jolting on the even cobblestones, motor trucks also now appeared, two of them, one behind the other, and Köves may well have been daydreaming, because he was late in noticing their strange freight: people were seated on their platforms, men, women, and, so it seemed, even children. Their bundles and belongings, the odd piece of furniture, indicated that these were families who were moving house — all that was missing being at most any sign of joy or excitement or even anxiety, not to say vexation, at such a removal, at what was, therefore, some kind of change, a new circumstance in life. The lifeless faces, possibly still worn from an early wakening, passed before Köves’s eyes in the dawn as if they were turning their backs indifferently on what they were leaving behind. Maybe because they were united in their sullen bad humour with those who were transporting them, Köves was slightly tardy in distinguishing the men squatting in the back of the trucks who were gripping a rifle between their knees: from their uniforms — he could hardly believe his eyes — Köves recognized them as being customs men, albeit shabbier-looking, commoner, or, as Köves would have put it, more pitiful than the customs men who had welcomed him.
He glanced at the pianist, but the latter did not return the look: hidden under the tree, he was watching the trucks with a keen, inquisitive gaze that now as good as pinched his normally soft, doughy features. He was watching them approach; when they got nearer, he almost stood on tiptoe in order to get a look into them, then turned as they passed and did not let them out of his sight until they had vanished in the distant bend in the road.
Then slowly, unfolding virtually every one of his limbs individually in the daybreak, rather like a genie in the process of slipping out of a flask, the pianist struggled to his feet off the bench. He flexed so violently that his limbs almost cracked, like a tree bending its branches; it was only now that it could be seen what a giant he was, with Köves (not himself exactly short) being practically dwarfed beside him when he too — involuntarily — got to his feet.
“We can go and get some shut-eye,” the pianist said and gave a big yawn. “The day’s done.” Köves seemed to pick out from this something like a quiet satisfaction in the voice. However, it would have been futile searching for any sign of the affability he had grown used to: the pianist did not look at him any more, rather as though he had ended the service that, for some obscure reason, had bound him to Köves so far. His face was tired, worn, grey as the morning — grey as the truth, Köves caught himself thinking. A bit later (by then they were walking outside on the street, with Köves virtually not noticing that they had set off), the pianist threw in:
“Well, they won’t come today then; they always come at dawn.”
“Always?” Köves asked, most likely just for the sake of asking something; he was a bit confused, besides which he was forced to step on it, because it looked as though the pianist’s trek had all of a sudden become urgent, and that he did not concern himself greatly with the fact that his own long steps were leaving Köves trailing behind.
“Didn’t you know that?” The pianist looked down at him from the height of his shoulders.
“I knew about it as such,” said Köves, but then, as though giving an answer to something different from, or maybe more than, he had been asked, he exclaimed: “Of course, I knew, I had to, how could I possibly say that I didn’t!” whereupon the pianist gave him a surprised glance. “It’s just that maybe … how should I put it … yes, it wasn’t something I was ready for,” he added, much more softly, still quite flustered but already starting to compose himself, though even so passers-by remarked it, albeit not as though they had been brought up short by curiosity, more in the sense that they hurried along still faster, fearing that even so they might unavoidably be obliged to overhear something.
“But you have to be ready for it,” said the pianist, this time again looking more amiably at Köves, as if he were now striking up a friendship afresh.
“Now I don’t understand,” said Köves.
“What do you mean?”
“The bench.”
“One of the best benches known to me in the city,” said the pianist.
“It’s because of the tree that you find it so pleasing,” Köves nodded. “And also because I was there as well,” he tacked on after some reflection.
“You got it! Two together makes it more entertaining.” At this moment the pianist was quite as he had been, a broad smile wreathing his broad features, just as when he had taken Köves under his wing that night. “And more secure,” he added.
Köves again pondered this.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said eventually.
“One still feels that way; you’d have to admit that much at least.” The pianist looked imploringly at Köves, in the way that one appeases the quarrelsome.
“Only for them to take the other one off along with you,” slipped out of Köves’s mouth before he had given any thought to the demands of good manners. “Do you know many benches?” he then asked in order to temper his words.
“Plenty,” said the pianist. “Pretty well all of them.”
By this point, the bustle through which they were proceeding was starting to pick up. At times they jostled among other people, at other times being held up by a red lamp.
“And do you imagine,” Köves, in full stride now, turned his whole body toward the pianist, looking up at him as at a lighthouse tower, “do you imagine they’re not going to find you on a park bench?”
“Who’s saying that?” the pianist replied. I just don’t want them to haul me out of bed.”
“What difference does it make?” Köves enquired, and for a while the pianist did not reply; he paced mutely beside Köves, seemingly plunged in thought, as if the question had hit a nail on the head, despite the fact that it was unlikely — or so Köves supposed — he had not already put it to himself.