“The difference between a rat and a rabbit may not be great,” the pianist eventually spoke, “but it’s crucial for me.”
“And why would they haul you out anyway?” Köves probed further. “Over the numbers?”
But the pianist merely smiled with sealed lips at that.
“Is there any way of knowing over what?” he then returned the question to Köves.
“No, there isn’t,” Köves admitted. They had reached a major crossroad, and as the morning light was reaching its fullness Köves looked around without any curiosity, feeling that he would now easily find his way: there was just a short stretch to go until he got home. “All the same …,” he said haltingly, as if he were searching for the words: “All the same … I think you’re exaggerating.” The pianist smiled mutely — the smile of a person who was in the know, more than he was willing to let on. As though triggered by that smile, Köves burst out: “Is that what our lives are about: avoiding winding up as freight on one of those trucks?”
“That, indeed,” the pianist nodded, and by way of reassurance, as it were, patted Köves gently on the nape of the neck. “And then you wind up on it anyway. If you’re really lucky,” he qualified with an expression that Köves this time felt was malicious, almost antagonistic, “you might even wind up at the back, at the rear end.”
“I don’t want the luck,” said Köves, “nor do I want sit at the rear end, but in the middle.” His agitation was in no way about to subside: “I think, he carried on, “all of you here are making a mistake. You pretend that all that exists are benches and those trucks … but there are other things …”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” and it seemed that Köves indeed did not know. Still, he did not let up:
“Something that’s outside all this. Or at least elsewhere. Something,” he suddenly came upon a word that visibly gratified him: “undefiled.”
“And what would that be?” the pianist wanted to know, his expression sceptical yet not entirely devoid of interest.
“I don’t know. That’s just it: I don’t know,” said Köves. “But I’m going to hunt for it,” he added swiftly, and no doubt equally involuntarily, because it seemed as if what he had just said had surprised himself most of all. “Yes,” he reiterated, as if all he were seeking to do was convince the pianist, or maybe himself: “That’s why I’m here, in order to find it.”
But this was where the pianist now came to a standstill and offered his hand:
“Well, much luck with that,” he said. “This is where I turn off, while you go straight on. Drop by to see me at the nightclub one evening. Don’t worry about the money, you’ll be my guest. As long as you find me there,” he added with a wry smile on his big, mellow face.
Köves promised to pay a visit. The pianist then turned off to the right, while Köves went on straight ahead.
Dwelling
Köves lived in a long but in other respects not particularly distinctive side street; to the best of his recollection — though his memory might well have been playing tricks, of course — there had at one time been some fairly comfortable dwellings in this district of the city. By now, of course, the houses were deteriorating, showing signs of damage and defacement, some of them literally crumbling, with, here and there, a balcony that had once boasted sweeping curves now disfigured and hanging into space over the heads of passers-by, with a notice warning of the threat to life, though evidently no one paid it any attention, and after the first few times of giving a cautionary glance up and dutifully walking round the warning sign Köves too passed beneath them with a nonchalant sense of defiance, and later on forgot even that. In the entrance hall he was greeted with a musty smell. Only a few of the imitation marble slabs that had faced the walls in the stairwell had remained in place, the elevator did not work, and there were gaps and cracks in the staircase as if iron-toothed beasts were taking bites out of the steps by night. Since he could hear sounds behind his front door: movement, a rapid patter of short steps, a shrill female voice as well as a second, croaking one of more uncertain origin, Köves did not even attempt to use his key — that too he found in the envelope he had been given by the chief customs man — but rather rang the bell so as not to embarrass anyone.
Shortly after, a woman who was on the short side and well into her forties appeared in the doorway wearing sloppy men’s trousers and a blouse of some kind, with what looked as if it might be alarm on her wan, peaky face, which disappeared the moment she had given Köves the once-over.
“So, here you are,” she said, stepping aside to permit Köves to step past her into the hallway. “We were expecting you yesterday.”
“Me?” Köves was astonished.
“Well, maybe not you specifically, but …”
“Who’s come?” the previous croaking voice, presumably an adolescent boy, could be heard now, amidst a rattling of crockery, from one side, from the kitchen.
“Nobody, just the lodger,” the woman called out and then again turned to Köves: “Or are you not the lodger?” and again cast a suspicious glance at him, even stepped back a bit as if she were suddenly regretting that she had let someone in who might be capable of anything.
But Köves hastened to reassure her:
“Of course,” and if he felt a sense of some kind of irrational disappointment, he could only blame himself: by the sober light of day, naturally, he could not have seriously supposed that he had been accorded the priceless gift of a home of his own; as it was, they had probably done more for him than they had thought — most likely nothing more than a provision that was driven by the pressure of necessity, so they would not have to immediately start shifting him from place to place as a homeless person. “I couldn’t come yesterday,” he continued, “because I arrived overnight …” Just in time Köves strangled his explanation, for he had rashly almost disclosed his obscure origin, so, as it was, his sentence sounded unfinished, though fortunately the landlady helped him out:
“From the country?”
“Yes, from the country,” Köves hastily acquiesced.
“I thought so right away.” The woman did not hide her dissatisfaction in the slightest. “I hope you don’t want to bring your family here, because in that case …”
But Köves interjected:
“I’m unmarried,” at which the woman fell silent and now for the first time peered more attentively at Köves’s face, as if with those two words — or the way he had said them — Köves had to some extent won her over.
“Can you play chess?” someone chimed in at that moment beside her: he caught sight of a chubby, bespectacled boy of thirteen or fourteen whose spiky hair, podgy physique, wobbly chin, and yet angular features reminded him of a hedgehog; he may have already been standing there in the kitchen door, watching them for a while, holding a half-nibbled slice of bread-and-butter in one hand, while two steaming teacups could be seen on the kitchen table behind him.
“Peter,” his mother chided him, “don’t bother …,” and here she hesitated, and Köves was just on the point of telling them his name — in the confusion introductions had somehow been forgotten — but the woman had already carried on: “You can see he’s only just arrived, he’s probably tired.”
“Well, can you or can’t you?!” The boy seemed not to have heard the admonition, and the peculiar strictness manifested on his face made Köves smile: