hich 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 no more than a minute before the cause of their unexpected retreat became apparent, for their intuition had warned them something was about to happen and this faultless, naked and instinctive fear of the unpredictable was enough to drive them to the option of immediate flight. By the time Mrs Eszter moved and disturbed the up-till-then-unbroken silence, the three rats were cowering in perfect safety at the foot of the outside wall at the back of the house; so she rose from the very ocean bed of sleep, drifting for a few minutes up into the shallows through which consciousness might faintly glimmer, and kicked off the eiderdown, stretching her limbs as if about to wake. There was of course no prospect of that yet and, after a few heavy sighs, she settled and began her descent into the depths from which she had only just risen. Her body — perhaps simply because it was no longer covered — seemed to grow even bigger than it already was, too big for the bed and indeed for the entire room: she was an enormous dinosaur in a tiny museum, so large no one knew how she had got there since both doors and windows were far too small to admit her. She lay on the bed, legs spread wide, and her round belly — very much an elderly man’s beer-gut — rose and fell like a sluggish pump; her nightgown gathered itself about her waist, and since it was no longer capable of keeping her warm, her thick thighs and stomach broke out in goosepimples. For now only the skin registered the change; the sleeper remained undisturbed, and since the noise had died away and there was nothing else to alarm them, the three rats once more ventured into the room, a little more at home this time but still maintaining utmost vigilance, prepared to flee at the slightest provocation, retracing their previous routes across the floor. They were so fast, so silent, their existence barely crossed the sensible threshold of reality; never once contradicting their blurry shadowy essence, they continually balanced the extent of their excursions against the peril of their sphere of activity, so that no one should discover them: those slightly darker patches in the darkness of the room were not hallucinations born of fatigue, not merely shadows cast by the immaterial birds of night, but three obsessively careful animals, tireless in their search for food. For that is why they had come as soon as the sleeper had fallen quiet, and why they returned, and if they hadn’t yet run up the table leg to pinch the heel of bread lying among the crumbs it was only because they had to be certain nothing unexpected would happen. They started with the crust, but little by little, and with ever greater abandon, they stuck their sharp little noses into the loaf itself and nibbled at it, though there was no sign of impatience in the rapid movement of their jaws, and the bread, tugged this way and that in three directions, was almost consumed by the time it rolled off the table and under the stool. Of course they froze when it hit the ground and once more stuck their snouts into the air, prepared to make a dash for it, but all was quiet on the Eszter front, there was nothing but slow even breathing, so, after a good minute of suspense, they quickly slipped to the floor and under the stool. And, as they were to find, it was in fact better for them here, for apart from the dense darkness providing greater protection, they could cut down the risks of exposure in retreating to the cover of the bed and thence to freedom when their extraordinary instinct finally told them to abandon the now barely recognizable piece of loaf. The night, in any case, was slowly coming to an end, a hoarse cockerel was furiously crowing, an equally angry dog had begun to bark and thousands and thousands of sleepers, Mrs Eszter among them, sensed the coming of dawn and entered the last dream. The three rats, together with their numerous confrères, were scuttling and squeaking in the neighbour’s tumbledown shed among frozen cobs of well-gnawed corn, when, like someone recoiling from a scene of horror, she gave a disconsolate snort, trembled, turned her head rapidly from left to right a few times, beating it on the pillow, then, staring-eyed, suddenly sat up in the bed. She struggled for breath and looked wildly this way and that in the still twilit room before she recognized where she was and understood that everything she had just abandoned had ceased to exist, then rubbed her burning eyes, massaged her goosepimpled limbs, drew the discarded covers over her and slid down again with a relieved sigh. But there was no question of going back to sleep because as soon as the awful nightmare vanished from her consciousness it was replaced by the awareness of the day ahead and what she was to accomplish, and such a thrill of pleasurable excitement ran through her she couldn’t drop off again. She felt refreshed and ready for action, and decided there and then to get up, for she was convinced that deed should immediately and without hesitation follow on design, so she threw off the eiderdown and stood a little uncertainly on the freezing floor, then donned her quilted jacket, grabbed the empty kettle and went out into the yard to bring in some water for washing. She took a deep lungful of chilling air, glanced at the dome of funereal cloud above her and asked herself if there could be anything more bracing than these merciless, masculine winter dawns, when cowards hide their heads and those ‘called to life venture bravely forth’. If there was anything she loved it was this, the earth clapped under ice, the razor-sharp air, and the unyielding solidarity of cloud which firmly repulsed the weak or dreamy gaze so the eye should not be confused by the potential ambiguities of the clear deep sky. She let the wind bite viciously into her flesh as the flaps of her jacket flew apart, and though the cold was practically burning her feet under the worn wooden soles of her slippers, it never entered her mind to hurry about her task. She was already thinking of the water that would wash away the remaining warmth of the bed, but she was to be disappointed in this, for though she was particularly looking forward to crowning the whole experience of dawn in this manner, the pump wouldn’t work: the rags and newsprint they had tried to insulate it with had proved no defence against the withering cold, so she was forced to wipe away the scum on top of the water left in the basin from last night and, abandoning any idea of a thorough wash, to dab at her face and tiny breasts, and, likewise with her hairy lower torso, she had to be content with giving herself a military-style dry wipe, for ‘a person can’t be expected to squat over a basin as usual when the water’s so dirty’. Of course it upset her to have to forgo such arctic delights, but a little thing like this wouldn’t ruin her day (‘not this of all days …’), so once she’d finished wiping herself and imagined Eszter’s look of astonishment as, a few hours from now, he bent over the open suitcase, she dismissed the painful likelihood that she would ‘suffer from BO’ the rest of the day and busied herself mechanically fiddling with this and that. Her fingers fairly flew and by the time it was clear daylight she had not only dressed, swept up and made the bed but, having discovered the evidence of last night’s crimes (not that she minded them too much, for apart from having got accustomed to such things, she had developed something of an affection for these brave little revellers), she sprinkled the well-chewed remnant with a ‘trusty rat poison’, so ‘her sweet little bastards’ could feast themselves to kingdom come should they dare return to the room. And since there was nothing more to tidy, organize, pick up or adjust, with a superior smile on her lips she ceremoniously lifted the battered old suitcase off the top of the wardrobe, opened the lid, then knelt down beside it on the floor and ran her eyes over the blouses and towels, stockings and knickers stacked in orderly piles on the wardrobe shelves, and in a few minutes had transferred them all into the yawning depths of the suitcase. The clicking shut of the rusty locks, the pulling on of her coat and, after all the waiting, all the frustration, the setting out with only this lightest of burdens for company, of actio