South Seas
At the cashier’s desk Köves was paid out what was owed him without a word — a laughable amount, although of course he had not yet informed himself about the prices, so his grumbling might just have been a sudden onrush of an employee’s instincts, the eternal craving which always feels that whatever is tossed at it is a tidbit, swallows it with an unappeased muttering, and then is already opening his mouth wide for the next morsel, never asking whether even the previous one had been earned: as far as Köves was concerned, he had not put in a stroke of work for it, and as a matter of fact they had only made a payment to him so that he would not be in their way for two weeks, nor be able to pester them with his petty worries even that long, while they saw to it that they should also stamp his entry permit, for without that he would never be able to step out of the front entrance; and on getting out onto the corridor he passed a man who, Köves remembered, had happened to be picking up some money immediately before him at the cashier’s desk and was just in the process of counting the bank notes yet again, for he too was visibly not very satisfied with the amount. As Köves went past, without raising his head, the man asked:
“They’ve kicked you out too?”
“Yep,” said Köves.
“But why?” the man asked, though apparently more abstractedly than out of genuine curiosity, as he stuffed the money into his pocket.
“I don’t know.” Köves shrugged his shoulders, perhaps a bit irritated, feeling sick and tired of his own affairs. “I wasn’t even here,” he threw out so as not to look grudging with his words.
“Aha!” said the other, a young man of roughly the same build as Köves, and now they trudged together down the long corridor toward the paternoster. “They sent you off into the country, and by the time you returned,
the notice of dismissal was waiting for you, right?”
“Right,” Köves admitted.
“That’s what they usually do,” the other nodded. “We got out of it rather well,” he added, as he and Köves stepped together into one of the descending boxes, which carried on sinking with them as its load.
“Why?” A spark of interest was kindled in Köves. “Have they kicked you out as well?”
“Darn right!” said the other.
“And why was that?” Köves asked.
“My face doesn’t fit.” Now it was his turn to shrug shoulders, just like Köves before. They were now in the entrance lobby. They handed in their permits to the customs man, then stepped out onto the street; the sunlight, the traffic, even the scanty, small-town bustle worked on Köves, with his all-accommodating and equalizing indifference, rather like an act of kindness. “These recent changes …,” the previous voice caught his ear, and Köves snatched up his head in surprise: he had already forgotten that he was not alone.
“What changes?” he asked, more just out of politeness, as he had a shrewd idea in advance that the answer would be exactly what it was:
“Can anyone know?”
“No, they can’t.” Köves nodded, feeling that he was taking part with obligatory automatism in some ceremony then in fashion.
But then something came to mind, this time a genuine question, touching on the heart of the matter, which he really ought to have addressed to himself but which he posed to the other all the same:
“So, what are you going to do now?”
“What?” Köves’s new acquaintance nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going to have lunch,” and the self-explanatory announcement somehow resonated with Köves and cheered him up, like someone who, after a lengthy exile, feels he is slowly starting to return to the world of human society. “Come with me, if you can spare the time,” Köves’s new acquaintance went on. Köves could now see that he had dark hair, a bulging forehead, and a coarse yet, on the whole, still pleasant face which seemed almost to crack when he laughed, as if a boy were suddenly sticking out his head among the prematurely hardened features. “We’ll go to the South Seas, you can always get something there,” and if before he had merely cheered up, Köves now unreservedly rejoiced, because he gathered that what was in question was a restaurant, and he realized that this was the very longing which was lurking in him: to sit down in a restaurant and to eat and drink his fill without a care, even if it were to be for the last time in his life, with a good friend.
“Is it far?” he showed his impatience.
“Haven’t you been in the South Seas before?” his new friend was genuinely astounded. “Well then, it’s time you got to know it,” at which they set off.
Washing of waves
A full belly, his thirst quenched with alcohol, even if it was weak, third-rate beer, the dense fug and the snatches of voices which would be cast up out of the constant buzz in the South Seas lulled Köves so completely that it was as if he were rocking on the backs of waves, at a detached remoteness from all the more solid certainties which were showing only indistinctly from a distance. When he had drifted in through the old-fashioned, glazed revolving door, it suddenly seemed to Köves that he was both acquainted with the place — a vast barn of a room, divided up into two or maybe more interconnecting spaces — and then again not, but at all events time had not passed by even the South Seas without leaving its mark: the velvet drapery showed signs of wear, a solitary piano on the podium, forlorn and shrouded in a cover — the whole thing gave the overall picture of a diner and coffee bar, gambling den and daytime refuge which had started to go downhill, where his new friend, Sziklai — on hearing the name something flashed through Köves’s mind, nothing more than a vague memory in a world where the vagueness of memories vies with that of the present — plainly felt completely at home, so Köves relinquished all initiative to him as being someone who wanted, for the time being at any rate, release from a burden that could hardly be dragged a step further: himself. He was again overcome by tiredness, so he only registered events from the periphery of his consciousness as it were. His steps were initially hurried and then more hesitant as they penetrated the interior of the place, no doubt its hub, so to speak — Köves had that impression. They were looking for someone; then the waitress who hastened to meet them, neither young nor old, and who was given a tragic air by the two deep furrows which ran from her nose to her chin, in diametric contrast to her words and the casual gesture with which she pointed to an empty table covered by a tablecloth of a somewhat suspect shade.
“My editor friends should park their carcasses there,” she said, from which it appeared that she already knew Sziklai well. Then there was their strange dialogue: Sziklai ordered fried fillet of pork for the two of them, at which the waitress asked: