l of the by-now notorious company: the result of her first significant public victory a week ago when — with the decisive support of the police chief — she managed to crush the resistance of the more cowardly members of the town’s executive committee who, by referring to the fact that all reports from outlying villages and hamlets, not to mention unsubstantiated gossip, suggested that the weird troupe caused alarm and unrest wherever it appeared, and that, furthermore, there had been one or two ugly incidents, had wished to ban it altogether from the town’s precincts. Yes: it had been her first significant triumph (there were many who said that her speech about ‘the inalienable rights of common curiosity’ could easily have been printed in the papers), yet, despite this, she could not enjoy the fruits of victory, since it was precisely because of the circus that she discovered, too late, the laughably false nature of her misapprehension concerning the true identity of these loiterers about her. Since she felt the mordancy of ridicule more keenly than she did the attraction and mystery of the enormous wagon, she didn’t even bother to investigate it in order to satisfy her own ‘inalienable rights of common curiosity’ about a vehicle so exotic it fully lived up to its publicity, but with a withering glance of contempt turned her back on both ‘the stinking juggernaut and those impudent rogues’, and strode with clanging steps down the narrow pavement home. This fit of temper, needless to say — just like the one which followed her encounter with Mrs Plauf — consisted, as the idiom has it, more of smoke than of fire, and by the time she had reached the end of Honvéd Passage and slammed the frail gate of the garden behind her, she had succeeded in getting over her disappointment, for she had only to remind herself that by the end of the next day she would no longer be subject to her fate but the genuine master of it, and immediately she could breathe more easily and begin to feel the full import of her self once again, a self that chose decisively to dismiss any thought of premature daydreaming, since ‘it desired victory and was resolute in the pursuit of it’. The landlady, an old wine merchant, occupied the front block; she inhabited the rear building of the ramshackle peasant dwelling, and while the place could have done with some repair she was not dissatisfied with it; for though the low ceiling prevented her standing up as straight as she might have wished and undoubtedly made movement difficult, and while the tiny ill-fitting windows and the walls crumbling with damp left scope for improvement, Mrs Eszter was so far a disciple of the so-called simple life that she hardly noticed these insignificant details, since, according to her convictions, if there was a bed, a wardrobe, a lamp and a basin, and if the roof didn’t leak in ‘the living unit’, all possible human needs were satisfied. And so, apart from a vast sprung iron bedstead, a single wardrobe, a stool with basin and jug, and a crested chandelier (she tolerated neither carpet, nor mirror, nor curtains), there was only an unvarnished table and a chair that had lost its back to serve for meals, a fold-away music-stand for the increasing amounts of official paper-work she had to bring home, and a coat-stand for guests (should there be any) to hang their coats on. As concerned the latter of course, ever since she had met the chief of police, she received no one except him, and he came every evening, for, from the day when the leather belt and shoulder strap, the polished boots and the revolver hanging at his side had swept her off her feet, she regarded him not only as a close friend, a man fit to support a solitary woman, but as an intimate confederate to whom she could trust her deepest most dangerous secrets, and pour out her heart in moments of weakness. At the same time — apart from all the basic conditions — it was not a trouble-free relationship, for the police chief, who was in any case prone to morose silences punctuated by the odd sudden fit of temper, was preoccupied by his ‘tragic family circumstances’—a wife who died in the flower of her youth and two little boys left to cope without a mother’s affections — and was a slave to drink, and, on being repeatedly questioned about it, would often admit that the only true remedy for his bitterness lay in the feminine warmth exuded by Mrs Eszter, which, to this day, was a burden she could never escape from. To this very day indeed, for Mrs Eszter — who had expected him to have arrived well before her — feared that the chief was at this very moment sitting in one of those suburban bars in his customary state of tortured gloom, so when she heard footsteps outside she went straight to the kitchen table, immediately reaching for the vinegar and box of bicarbonate, knowing from previous experience that the only cure for his condition was that (unfortunately) highly popular local mixture known as ‘goose-spritzer’, which, in the face of general opinion, she believed to be the only efficacious — if emetic — treatment, not only for indigestion the day after, but for drunkenness on the day. To her surprise the visitor turned out to be not the chief but Harrer, Valuska’s landlord, a stonemason who, probably because of his pockmarked face, was known to locals as ‘the vulture’; there he lay, flat out on the ground, because, as one could see at a glance, his legs, which were incapable of indefinitely supporting his constantly collapsing body, had given way just before his helplessly dangling hands could grasp the handle of the door. ‘What are you doing lying there?’ she barked at him, but Harrer didn’t move. He was a small, puny homunculus of a man; lying crumpled on the ground, his feeble legs folded under him, he would have fitted perfectly into one of those large dough-baskets stored out in the garden — furthermore he stank so intensely of cheap brandy that within a few minutes the fearful smell had filled the entire yard and penetrated every nook and cranny of the house, rousing even the old woman from her bed, who, as she drew the curtain of her courtyard window aside, could only wonder why ‘decent people can’t be content with drinking wine’. But by that time, Harrer, who seemed to have changed his mind, recovered consciousness and leapt from the doorway with such agility that Mrs Eszter almost thought the whole thing a joke. Nevertheless, it was immediately clear that it wasn’t, for waving his brandy bottle with one hand, the mason suddenly produced a tiny bouquet of flowers with the other, and, swaying in the most dangerous fashion, squinted at her in a manner so intensely beyond fooling, so utterly unreciprocated by Mrs Eszter — especially once she could make sense of his gulping and gasping to the effect that all he wanted was for Mrs Eszter to hug him as she once used to (for ‘you, your ladyship, and only you, can provide consolation for this poor sad heart of mine …!’) — that, grabbing him by the shoulder-pads of his coat, she raised him into the air and, sans quips or jokes, heaved him in the direction of the garden gate. The heavy coat landed like a half-empty sack some few yards off (for the sake of accuracy, right in front of the window of the old woman, who was still staring and wagging her head), and Harrer, while not quite certain whether this new fall was in any significant sense different from his earlier one, began to suspect he was not wanted and made to scamper away; leaving Mrs Eszter to return to her room, turn the key in the lock and try to put the affront out of her mind by switching on the pocket radio next to her bed. The pleasantly rousing tunes—‘jolly traditional airs’ as it happens — had, as always, a good effect on her, and little by little succeeded in calming her seething temper, which was just as well, for while she should have been used to such irruptions, it not having been the first time that feckless characters had disturbed her at night, she flew into a fury every time one of her old acquaintances, such as Harrer (to whom she had no real objection for she could happily while away the time with him—‘Now and then, of course, just now and then’), ‘showed a total disregard of her new social position’ in which she could no longer allow herself to relax, for whoever Mrs Eszter perceived as the enemy would be waiting ‘for precisely such an opportunity’. Yes, she needed her peace and quiet, for she knew that tomorrow the fate of an entire movement would be decided; rest was what she needed without a shadow of doubt; and that is why, on hearing the unmistakable sound of the police chief’s footsteps out in the yard, her first wish was that he would simply turn round with all his accoutrements of belt, strap, boots and gun and go home. But when she opened the door and saw the short and scrawny figure who hardly came up to her shoulders and was probably drunk again, a quite different desire suddenly took hold of her, for not only was he quite steady on his feet, he didn’t look as though he was about to start bawling at her either. He stood rather like ‘a panther about to spring’, with a pugnacious look which, she immediately understood, called less for bicarbonate of soda than abandoned passion; for her friend, companion and comrade — far surpassing her hopes of the evening — came to her as a hungry warrior, whom, she felt, it was impossible to resist. She couldn’t deny, for she never did lack masculine resolution, that ‘she was capable of properly appreciating the rubber-booted man who urged her on to rarely achieved heights of orgasm’, nor could she sneeze at the opportunity when someone of otherwise modest ability — like him — so clearly promised her personal advancement. So she said nothing, asked for no explanations, did not dismiss him, but, without any more ado, responded to his ever more passionate expression (which each second promised greater and greater delight), by languorously stepping out of her dress, dropping her underclothes in a heap on the floor, then slipping into the specially reserved flame-coloured baby-doll nightie he was so fond of and, as if obedient to command, arranging herself with a shy smile on all fours on the bed. By that time ‘her friend, companion and comrade’ had likewise divested himself of his gear, switched off the light and, wearing his heavy boots, with his customary shout of ‘To arms!’ threw himself on her. And Mrs Eszter was not disappointed: within a few minutes she had managed to rid the chief of all his troublesome memories of the evening, and after they had collapsed on the bed, breathless from their wild coupling, and he, gradually sobering, had received her acknowledgement of satisfaction delivered in an appropriately military manner, she rendered him a slightly edited version of her encounters with Mrs Plauf and the rabble in the market square, after which she felt so wonderfully confident and calm, her whole body suffused by such an extraordinarily sweet sense of peace, that she was certain that not only would the next day crown her with glory, but that there was no one who could possibly deprive her of the final fruits of victory. She wiped herself with a towel, had a glass of water, then lay back on the bed and only half-listened to the chief’s rambling account of his doings, because there was nothing more important now than this ‘confidence and calm’ and that ‘sweet sense of peace’, these messages of happiness that now rose from every nook and cranny of her body and rippled merrily through her. What did it matter that the ‘fat circus manager’ kept nagging him so long for ‘the customary local licence’, what did she care that the chief recognized ‘a gentleman from top to toe’ in the elegant though slightly fishy-smelling figure of the director of the world-famous company, and holding ‘an unopened bottle of Szeguin’ in his hand, extended his attention, as befitting a guardian of law and order, to suggest the assurance of some modest police presence (and that the request for such be tendered in writing) so that the three-day visiting performance be conducted without any let or hindrance, when she was just beginning truly to feel that everything was bound to lose significance once ‘the body began to speak’, and that there was nothing more delightful and elevating than the moment when thigh, tail, breast and groin desire nothing but to drift gently and smoothly into sleep? So satisfied did she feel that she confessed to him that she no longer needed him, and so, after he had several times ventured beyond the warmth of her eiderdown and shrank back in again, she sent the chief on his way with a few words of sound maternal advice regarding ‘the orphans’, watching him pass through the door into the freezing cold and thinking of him, if not precisely with love — for she had always dissociated herself from such romantic literary nonsense — then at least with a certain pride, then, having exchanged her seductive baby-doll for the warmer flannel nightgown, she slipped back into bed at last to enjoy ‘her well-earned sleep’. Using her elbow, she smoothed out the sheet where it had rucked up under her, dragged the eiderdown back over her with her feet, then, turning first on her left side then her right, found the most comfortable position to lie in, pressed her face into the soft warmth of her arm and closed her eyes. She was a sound sleeper, so after a few minutes she quietly nodded off, and the occasional jerking of her feet, the rolling of her eyeballs under their thin lids and the ever more regular rising and falling of the eiderdown were accurate indicators that she was no longer properly aware of the world about her, that she was drifting further and further from the present enjoyment of naked power which was rapidly diminishing but would be hers again tomorrow, and which in her hours of consciousness whispered that she was mistress of her poor cold possessions and that their fate depended on her. The washbasin no longer existed, neither did the untouched glass of bicarbonate; the wardrobe, the clothes-rack and the stained towel thrown into a corner, all disappeared; floor, walls and ceiling had no more meaning for her; she herself was nothing but an object among objects, one of millions of defenceless sleepers, a body, like others, returning each night to those melancholy gates of being which may be entered but once and then with no prospect of return. She scratched her neck — but she was no longer aware of doing so; for a moment her face contorted into a grimace — but it was no longer aimed at anyone in particular; like a child crying itself to sleep she gave a brief sob — but it no longer carried meaning because it was only her breath seeking a regular pattern; her muscles relaxed, and her jaws — like those of the dying — slowly fell open, and by the time the chief had negotiated the severe frost, got home and thrown himself fully clothed beside the sleeping forms of his two sons, she had already penetrated to the dense core of her dream … In the thick darkness of her room it seemed nothing stirred: the dirty water in the enamel basin was preternaturally still, on the three hooks of the clothes-rack, like great sides of beef above a butcher’s counter, hung her sweater, her raincoat and a substantial quilted jacket, the bunch of keys hanging from the lock had stopped swinging, having finally absorbed her earlier momentum. And, as if they had been waiting for just this moment, as if this utter immobility and complete calm had been some sort of signal, in the great silence (or perhaps out of it), three young rats ventured out from under Mrs Eszter’s bed. Carefully the first slithered past, shortly followed by the other two, their little heads raised and attent, ready to freeze before leaping; then, silently, still bound by their instinctive timidity, they proceeded, hesitating and freezing every few steps, to a tour of the room. Like intrepid scouts for an invading army apprising themselves of enemy positions before an onslaught, noting what lay where, what looked safe or dangerous, they examined the skirting boards, the crumbling nooks and corners and the wide cracks in the floorboards, as if mapping out the precise distances between the bolthole under the bed, the door, the table, the cupboard, the slightly teetering stool and the window-ledge — then, without touching anything, in the blinking of an eye, they shot off under the bed in the corner again, to the hole that led through the wall to freedom. It was n