He was pursued by extreme anxiety when he returned from the Catholic town on the other side of the river and, after a half-hour walk, with his long strides gained the village’s miserable main square, mute in the heat. He was sweating in his black suit; his prostate, his bladder, and his kidneys were killing him. After all, a pastor can’t just stop by the roadside ditch to relieve himself; anyway, he couldn’t urinate quickly and amply anymore. He really should have stopped often at the edge of the empty road. And if he did not urinate at least a bit, the persistent urge remained in his urethra and bladder, and after a while his kidneys began to burn and shooting pains pierced his back. His bladder tightened unbearably, which in turn produced an urge to defecate.
It was hard to take so much physical punishment all at once.
The women on the steps of the general store, standing there with loaves in hand, were still analyzing the recent event in fine detail, but the delivery truck had long since sped away and the presbyter was back at his place behind the fence.
The suffering pastor could hardly wait to get home. He had to acknowledge his grandson’s negligence as having been his own mistake, and he was in no mood to discuss it with anyone.
His shame and the accumulated poison in his body created bizarre images in his mind.
He had walked down the middle of the road, which definitely testified to openness of character, but the moment he noticed the little crowd of people in front of the store he stepped onto the sidewalk and walked more rapidly in the shade of the morello trees. Let the villagers see that even without them he knew how to deal with such negligence. He greeted them, smiling at each one, and the women returned his greeting as usual, readily, distrustfully, joylessly.
In his heart he despised them for their joylessness.
Every morning he tried to awaken cheerfully, but during the last quarter-century these obdurate pagans on the Danube had rarely reciprocated his smile or laugh. It was impossible to budge them from their gloom even with a word of love.
Luckily he managed this time to avoid talking to them, but he had hardly taken a few steps in the shade when he literally tripped over the presbyter, still busy loosening pickets on his decaying fence.
He asked the presbyter whether he had seen his grandson Dávid.
The thickset, large-eyed, and always rather grubby little man had enough troubles of his own. Why should he keep an eye on the pastor’s shitty grandson too. He had to replace the whole fence, but where would he get new cross-pieces for it, and as if he hadn’t even heard the pastor, he told him about his problem.
Imagine, he shouted, with the nail-ridden piece of wood in his hand poking in the direction of the general store, your reverence won’t believe it, that rotten tramp stole bread right in front of our eyes.
His grandson had stolen bread, no. The pastor’s jaw dropped on hearing this.
And before that, he stole from my cherry trees, what kind of a world do we live in, wasn’t ashamed to steal from us in broad daylight.
Every trace of a smile disappeared from around the pastor’s eyes and he simply watched the words emerging from the presbyter’s toothless mouth.
That is what made the presbyter understand what the pastor had asked him before.
And he quickly answered that no, he hadn’t, how could he have seen Dávid.
Then who stole the bread, asked the pastor, staring at the presbyter even more incredulously.
Some tramp, a pox on him, the presbyter continued to rave. How did he get the nerve, to eat sour cherries off his tree right in front of him. He can’t stomach it.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
Well, your reverence, that’s what we’ve come to, I’m telling you, this is the kind of world we live in.
The ferrymen told me he didn’t ring the bell, the pastor continued hesitantly.
The presbyter knitted his shaggy old-mannish brows.
You say he didn’t ring the bell, he shouted stupidly, but why wouldn’t he, he mumbled very slowly and haltingly, drawing out his words along with his sluggish thoughts, trying to backpedal a bit.
Bells were ringing in his ears, but he could not decide if it had been at noon the day before when he had heard them last.
The pastor’s experience was that the brains of people on the Danube were even slower than those of people on the Tisza.
Could it have been at dawn, he mumbled to himself. His effort to remember took longer than the pastor’s bladder could endure.
Well then, God be with you, he muttered so he could at last be on his way.
Nevertheless, a mere half hour later they were riding their bicycles together out of the village.
The dirt road would take them a little away from Balter’s property, yet Balter thought they were headed toward his place. They jumped off their bicycles, hastily threw them to the side, and walked in his direction, agitated and threatening.
The moment he saw them he meant to put on his shirt, which would have been the decent thing to do, but he didn’t. As if he had lost his presence of mind. The first thing that came into his head was that his wife had died.
During hot summer days, the dry sand along the Danube draws out a person’s steps, and anyone walking in that sand seems to be making progress more slowly than he actually is, rising and sinking a bit. Here come the messengers, Balter thought anxiously, counting heavily on news of his wife’s death.
Then he’d move back to town to escape the damned horseflies.
He had witnessed many deaths and concluded that death behaved unpredictably even when it came about as a result of human violence. If, for example, a tube is shoved down someone’s throat or someone is beaten mercilessly, the people doing such things must count on the person’s possible death, though it’s not inevitable, since artificial feeding and even the bloodiest beating can be survived, depending on the victim. And yet death can appear with a single jolt. Or after the very first blow, even though no one intended it. He had witnessed it so many times, from close up and from far away, that when he saw the messengers he could only think that here it was again.
For decades he had wanted nothing but his wife’s speedy death.
The two men were approaching quickly on the marshy footpath that led straight to the apricot tree. Balter, holding his shirt in his hand, did not move for several moments. A large-bodied bespectacled man was in front, in a white shirt and black pants rolled up above his ankles; in build and age he resembled Balter, and he almost covered up the little man galloping behind him. The little man wore a black hat in the heat and kept waving a picket in rhythm with his hastening steps. When they came within hearing distance, still treading on the soft sand, they both shouted greetings, which Balter acknowledged but, because of the surprised waiting, was not in a position to return.
Seeing him mute and motionless, the two men slowed and, after a few involuntary steps, halted, uncertain.
Shouting from his spot, the larger man asked whether Balter had seen a tramp in the area.
Balter felt that a very long time passed before he understood the question, and he could signal only with a shaking of the head that no, he had not.
But this apparently long time did not remain empty; a great many things happened during it.
The bespectacled man’s wild look settled mainly on Balter’s pants. First, he looked over the lower parts, then, a bit embarrassed, his eyes glided past the groin area and up to Balter’s deep chest, as if to gauge its size and strength should he have to fight the man. As if Balter were the tramp they were looking for so hard. Or as if a similar, even more impossible assumption were making the air vibrate around them. Suspicion and blame: these two were suspecting him of something. Given their physical attributes and age, a fight between them would not have been uninteresting. The pastor’s wrath restrained by his moral stance, and the jailer’s cool competence based on much experience; the pastor’s short temper and his strength refined by spirituality, and the jailer’s raw strength and inexperience in spirituality — these made for measurable differences that rendered the outcome unpredictable. And they weren’t in it alone, face-to-face; there was the third unpredictable man too.