If Luca had not said that it was you who told her mother in the brickworks that she could step out of the column before it set off, then I would not have dropped in on her when she arranged for you to visit.
I don’t have any recollection to this day of having spoken to Luca’s mother in the brickworks.
As an eighteen-year-old student I was hugely impressed by a writer, even fancied him a bit …
The age difference between us is twenty-eight years, even then …
I still fancied you.
You are too attractive to be saying things like that.
She places a hand on mine.
I felt sorry for that fourteen-year-old boy.
There’s no need, I say. That would bother me, even trouble me.
We plant a kiss on one another’s cheeks.
It’s easy for you, she says. You can pick up your path wherever you want.
Wherever, I think to myself, but who picks up his trail and gets anywhere? I ought to tell her about that feeling, too. I ought to tell her that when the assistant found me in the car park of the Grand Hotel in Locarno and hauled me off to the floodlit terrace, where the cameras were already rolling — in other words a start had been made on the performance in which no one was who they were in reality — it turned out that the two harlequins, and to this day I don’t know if they were a man and a woman or two men or even two women, that they too were part of the supporting cast. Their role was to marvel at us as spectators, in other words as posterity, so to speak, not as the witnesses that we were but as the survivors that we were called. I ought to tell her about the shame with which I was filled when, on stepping on to the terrace, I felt that I, too, was nothing more than the role that had been allocated to me. And I also ought to tell her that I was delighted just beforehand when she said that pain and suffering were universal, and that agrees with what we call history — true, she didn’t quite say it like that, but that is how I would put it. Then I also ought to tell her — I suppose that both of us knew — that on reaching the end of our path we arrive at the beginning.
She may sense that if she were to ask I might say one thing or another, but I can see from her look that she knows where the boundary lies beyond which she must not step.
She puts an arm round my waist and leads me over to the window.
It was from here she watched her mother as she got back home, shopping-bags in hand. I might also be looking at my own self from here, walking along that same pavement with my school bag as a fourteen year-old. We can imagine the things — she, the shopping-bag; me, the school bag — without which we are unable to conceive that we are seeing what the other sees. She repeats that it is easier for me because, as she puts it, I can pick up my path wherever I want, and I don’t declare that for me that means I shall later describe her room, list the objects in it and, above all, try to describe the photographs placed on the chest of drawers, but as for what knowledge I discern in her gaze … for that, most certainly, it would be hard for me to find the words; if, indeed, there were words that could be found.
XV
Once again they are burying people in the yard.
Once again family members are standing beside a freshly dug pit. Gyuri again sings the Kaddish, but this time they must have found it harder to assemble ten men, as I can also see two boys among them. Again I watch from the balcony as wives, husbands, children and parents throw a handful of soil into the pit.
They are also carrying out a burial in the yard of the house next door, the other side of the wall. They, too, lower a corpse wrapped in sacking into a freshly dug grave. There, too, there are people standing around, making signs of the cross and murmuring prayers — I assume the Lord’s Prayer. I learned that; I could recite it, too. They look up and listen to what Gyuri is singing, and the sound of the Kaddish rises towards heaven.
There are others on the balcony. A member of the team keeping watch on the gate comes, and he says that the fighting is now in Dráva Street. German reinforcements have arrived at the Comedy Theatre; it is said that an artillery battery of the Hungarian Army has also moved in as well as an Arrow Cross stormtrooper unit. The biggest ruckus will be here in Pannónia Street, says a man who has escaped from a forced-labour brigade. It’s a good time to go down into the cellar.
The warden is informed that only one day’s drinking water is left.
There is shooting in the streets, and no one will volunteer to take buckets to Ernő Hollán Street, parallel with this but two streets nearer the river, where drinking water can be drawn from a tank.
The physicist, chewing a crust of bread, invites me to play a game of chess in the bathroom. I sit on the lavatory seat, he on the rim of the bath. If either of us has things to do we’ll go out then come back and resume the chess.
There is now very little water left in the buckets even to flush the toilets.
I opt for a Spanish opening. I get entangled in the moves. We’ll analyse it later, says the physicist. Let’s just play this game out. Are you able to see that I’m going to lose? It’s pretty obvious, he says. He turns to the warden, who has come in in the meantime. The end is already apparent at the start, Józsi. That’s how it is and not just in chess.
If you can see the situation so far in advance why did you not say so in time? says the warden.
I did, only the idiots carried on blindly. Like I said, they are blind.
So that makes me an idiot and blind as well?
As far as being an idiot goes, yes, Józsi, but blind you aren’t. It could never be said of you that you don’t see what is before your eyes. Just don’t forget what you see.
I move one of my knights. Not bad, says the physicist. We’ll analyse that later. Given your position, that was the best move possible — not that it will help you, of course, but, given that you have closed the way for most of your pieces, it was a good move.
I won’t forget, says the warden. I was only worried about Klári. She is taking on too much.
There’s no need to be worried about Klári. I’ve known her longer than you. She’s very tenacious, more so than you even.
I like their way of talking. I think I understand. I try to pay attention to them, although it’s hard enough concentrating on the chess, but at least this takes the edge off my hunger. I’m thirsty as well, having had nothing to drink since this morning.
It’s good if you can see positions that other people don’t see let alone remember. All those many blind people who watch every last thing but see nothing and don’t remember anything.
I can see from his expression that he excuses me my silence. It’s good to hear the warden say, You know what, Laci, you’ve missed your calling. You should have chosen to be a priest. Nonsense, the physicist gesticulates. He moves his queen and announces, Check!
Bombs are now falling without any howling from the sirens.
Light bombs, says the warden. The most they will do is punch a hole in the roof, and the return fire now is mostly shooting submachine guns into the air. There’s no need to go down to the cellar.
I slip a pawn in front of the attacking queen.
What I don’t understand is how it could have happened, says the warden.
That’s what I’m spelling out, says the physicist, slapping the warden on the back. You should always keep your eye on the previous error.
A woman comes in and announces that she saw from the window that Arrow Crossers were leading four men with yellow stars on their coats towards the Danube.
People shouldn’t go outside for water with yellow stars on their coats, says the physicist. There are no volunteers so far, says the warden.