The empty pitcher stayed on the step; it was the boy’s job to bring fresh water.
He locked the door again. The stifling night air sat heavily in the space; hardly any light filtered through the small window. While getting dressed he could see almost nothing without his glasses. He wore his wide work pants no longer than a week but changed his underwear and shirt every other day. The shirts were all checked gingham, differing only in their colors, about as much as sun-bleached black might differ from faded blue or dull gray from washed-out brown.
János Tuba wore the same kind of shirt except he preferred to work half naked.
The bulging lenses stared at him in the dimness, because he always laid down his glasses the same way in the evening, with the temples folded in. It was autumn by the time he regained his health somewhat, and spring when he realized that although his body was strong enough, his vision had not cleared up. Since then he’d had to change his lenses twice for stronger ones; the optician was none too pleased the second time.
Where was that grumbling optician by now.
Bizsók traveled home every two weeks; from the railroad station he had to cross the marketplace on foot to the bus station, and he could stop at the optician’s place on his way. There the two young women who waited on customers wore short white smocks made of some translucent material, and they both had their hair set in a tower of layers. All the new frames were too expensive for him and not to his taste either.
His loyalty was not to his old, obviously worthless glasses but to something else he couldn’t have named.
Every morning he pulled open the drawer in the little table and took out the chamois from next to the empty payroll envelopes. His life had no more absorbing and fulfilling moments than this. He guarded his dreams with his deliberate awakening, and his dreams guarded his past. He was alert, because the fatigued material demanded caution, but he did not need to think. The act he performed was simple, but it was done among past events. Every morning he held brittle fate in his hands.
First he folded out the temples, making sure the brads were still all right. It was not a big problem if a brad became loose or fell off, since at home he had a very small hammer — he had no idea how he had got it, only watchmakers and jewelers used such an instrument, but there it was, he had it. With this hammer he was reassured about the brads. But a temple broke once, and an even more difficult situation arose when the frame around one lens cracked and then snapped.
He smeared hot tar on the uneven surface of the fracture, and when it set, he wound a thread dipped in tar around the temple, and on top of that a length of copper wire hardly thicker than the thread. The broken frame was harder to repair. With a glowing-hot steel pin, he burned holes in the plastic. It took even longer to manufacture a clip small enough to fit into the holes and hold fast on both sides.
Between two fingers he held the bridge of the glasses tight, very tight; otherwise, if he tried to do it in a gingerly way, he’d have more trouble. While cleaning the lenses with the chamois and being careful not to let the need for cleanliness become stronger than what the frame could bear, he was actually preoccupied with what was no longer humanly possible to comprehend in the inner nature of things, even though they were not a secret to anyone.
The sense of treacherously prowling dangers compels everyone to moderate their behavior, even though immoderate behavior can sometimes turn out well.
Twenty-seven men of their regiment remained in the infinite, vanishing dunes where they had been surrounded for two days. They had no place to retreat, only to the sea, and while the threat to life compelled some to surrender, it urged others to hold on and find a way to slip out of the trap. These were the last minutes of the war for them, why should they die now. At the same time they had to keep an eye on each other; and they went at each other, hissing and yelling; there was nothing left in them but endless swearing. They were careful that none of them would lose his sanity or endanger the life of a comrade. There was no place where one of them could go alone, and together with the others in this dangerous group, it also no longer made sense to venture into unfamiliar areas. They knew the sea was out there somewhere, they even felt its presence, but none of them knew what he felt about it.
A sergeant kept their spirits up. He was literally intoxicated by his heroic conduct during the hopeless battles of the previous days and by the weight of his duty to command and lead other men on the road between life and death. Fervega was the sergeant’s name. As far as he was concerned, he said, his face weary, anybody could go wherever he wanted to, but anybody staying with him must obey him. Until then they’d thought of him as a rather meek man; perhaps they had failed to notice it was restrained blind anger that made him look so drowsy, and not the lack of sleep that tortured and exhausted them all. They had nothing to eat and, more important, no potable water. And they knew they wouldn’t find any here. They did not know where they were. They had a page torn from a German school atlas but no means of orientation. They were very close to the sea in this incredibly wide, flat terrain that gave them no protection, but none of them had ever seen the sea and had no idea what feature of the terrain signaled the proximity of water. Nevertheless, first they had to leave the highway and then a dirt road, even though it was the only familiar feature of the terrain. Sergeant Fervega was a precision-instrument maker in civilian life, a man with able hands, the rest were rough-mannered peasant boys, and there was one Gypsy among them.
They must have come very close to the sea several times, but they could not distinguish the rhythmic lapping of the waves from the strong booming and whimpering wind.
Their inexperienced eyes saw ridges of desolate dunes on the horizon. They were walking in a wakeful dream.
Yet after a while Fervega realized that when they managed to go inland the wind, which held them in its grip and blustered with all its might in their ears, weakened and became more musical, as it were, and grew stronger when they came close to the water again. And something similar must have been happening with their vision. Where the water was close there was no longer any sky and no longer distinguishable clouds; it was difficult to separate visions and illusions from these unfamiliar phenomena. Still, Fervega thought it was better not to go right up to the sea with this handful of men, if only because he knew nothing of the nature of the shore or the water; but, equally, it was better if they didn’t move too far from the sea either, since it was more dangerous inland.
Eventually they would surely find some human settlement, which they should first observe from a safe distance. It would be advantageous to approach from the direction of the water. Ever since they’d been driven across the Hungarian border, following retreating German troops, they had the feeling that no matter where they wound up, even if at the edge of the map, there’d be no end to this damned Germany; they’d never get out of it.
Some of them cried whenever they stopped, even for a moment; the others had to turn away from them.
Fervega did not want them to stop.
After a spell of walking, they saw a black stone building on the desolate horizon under low-flying black clouds. As they kept walking, they saw it was a solitary building far from any human settlement. It was reminiscent of a granary on some estate, or a cathedral nave. They approached in a spread-out-chain formation, alternately ducking and straightening up, hoping to find a well, and a fire so they could at least dry themselves. Near the building, where the movement of the air seemed to change, they thought they heard disconnected snatches of the hum of voices or some church melody. It reminded some of them of a beehive buzzing or the drone of a distant marketplace.