coup. For it was undoubtedly the case — as she herself admitted later — that all this meticulous planning, fine calculation and boundless circumspection was quite unnecessary, for no more was required than that instead of the laundered knickers, socks, vests and shirts something entirely unexpected should be discovered there, in historical terms ‘the first and final notice of a victim in full realization of her rights’, and that if this day marked the beginning of something new it was simply a tactical switch from covert warfare — against Eszter and for ‘a better future’—to forthright attack. But here, proceeding along the narrow, icy pavements of Honvéd Passage, it seemed to her that if she were to step from the suffocating atmosphere of action-deferred into the dizzyingly fresh breeze of action-direct, it was impossible to be too circumspect, and so, while steaming full speed ahead towards the market square, she went over and over the minutiae of the words she might use, the words that would form the sentences which, once she located Valuska, would render him wholly impotent. She had no doubts, feared no unexpected turn of events, she was as certain in her own mind as anyone could be, yet every nerve and sinew in her body was concentrated on the impending encounter, to the extent that having reached Kossuth Square and glimpsed the group of ‘filthy touts’ who since the previous night had grown into a veritable mob, her reactions were less of shock than of angry frustration that she might not, she thought, get through to the other side without engaging in close hand-to-hand combat, though ‘any loss of time — in the present situation — was quite impermissible!’ However, since there was no alternative but to struggle through the multitude, for the immovable (and, because they held her up, in her eyes no longer supernatural) loiterers filled not only the square but the entrances of the neighbouring streets, she was forced to use the suitcase as an offensive weapon, while being careful occasionally to raise it above her head while weaving her way through to Híd Road and suffering the stares of slyly gleaming pairs of eyes and the fumblings now and then of impertinent hands. The great majority of those present were foreign, clearly peasants, attracted here, thought Mrs Eszter, by news of the whale, but there was an unsettling alien quality about the local faces too, faces she vaguely recognized as belonging to small farmers at the outskirts of town who brought their wares to the busy weekly market. As far as she could judge from the distance between them and from the thickness of the crowd, the circus management had not given very much indication that they would soon commence their undoubtedly unique performance, and having attributed the icy tension evident in eyes which caught hers to this, she no longer permitted that annoying impatience to preoccupy her, but on the contrary allowed herself, for one clear minute, since she had had no opportunity yesterday, to enjoy the proud self-satisfaction of the thought that this great mass of people were ignorant of the fact that everything, but everything, was only there thanks to her, for without her memorable intervention there would have been ‘no circus, no whale, no production of any kind’. Only for a minute, one brief minute, for once having left them behind and finally found her route past the older houses of Híd Road towards Count Vilmos Ápor Square, she had forcefully to remind herself that her concentration must be focused entirely elsewhere. She clutched the creaking handles of the suitcase with even greater fury, and slammed her heels down on the pavement with an even heavier military stride, and so soon managed to re-establish the train of thought which had been so annoyingly interrupted and lose herself in the labyrinth of words intended for Valuska’s ears, so much so that when she practically bumped into two policeman — probably on their way to the market — who greeted her with proper marks of respect, she quite neglected to return their salutations, and by the time she realized what had happened and waved after them in a somewhat preoccupied fashion they were already a long way down the road. By the time she reached the junction of Híd Road and ápor Square, however, there was no time left to contemplate anything, and in any case her train of thought had drawn up at the station; she felt that every word, every useful turn of phrase was now securely under her command, and, happen what may, nothing now could take her by surprise: dozens and dozens of times she had run the scene through in her imagination, how she would begin, what the other would say, and, since she knew the other as well as she did herself, she could add the finishing touches and stand before the breathtaking tower of her most effective sentences not only in the likelihood but in the certainty that forthcoming events would be resolved wholly to her advantage. It was enough to conjure up the pitiful figure, the sunken chest, the crooked back, the thin scrawny neck and those ‘warm liquid eyes’ overtopping all; it was sufficient to recall his eternal hobbling as he carried that enormous post-bag, lurched by the wall and stopped intermittently and hung his head; like someone who at every step stops to check that she actually sees what no one else sees, if only in order that she should have no further doubts about its existence, so she kept reminding herself that Valuska would do what was expected of him. ‘And if he shouldn’t,’ she smiled coldly, transferring the suitcase to the other hand, ‘I’ll give his stunted balls a little squeeze. The runt. The nobody. I eat his kind.’ She stood below the steeply pitched roof of Harrer’s house, took a quick look at the glass-topped wall before it and opened the gate in a manner sufficient to attract the immediate attention of the ‘eagle-eyed’ Harrer, who was in any case watching from one of the windows, so he should be in no doubt that this was no time for idle chatter, and that she would ‘simply and without warning step on any common or garden weed that got in her way’. And, as if to underline the point, she gave her suitcase a swing, though Harrer — labouring under the false impression that this gesture indicated she was on her way to meet him — was beyond being deterred by anything, and so it happened that when she was just about to turn right, bypassing the house, and make her way across the garden to the old kitchen-laundry which served as Valuska’s home, Harrer suddenly leapt out from behind the door, threw himself in front of her and — silently, desperately — raised his haunted face to her with a look of entreaty. Mrs Eszter — seeing at once that her guest of last night, incapable of comprehension, was waiting for a forgiving word — showed no mercy; without so much as opening her mouth she sized him up in a glance and shoved him aside with her suitcase as lightly as she would some bent twig in her way, wholly ignoring his existence, as if all the guilt and shame — since Harrer now remembered last night all too well — which racked him counted for nothing. After all, no point in denying it, it genuinely did count for nothing, as did Mrs Plauf and the fallen poplar; nor did the circus, the crowd, not even the memories of times spent with the police chief, however sweet, mean anything now; so, when Harrer, with all the ingenuity of people hardened to bitter disappointment, and scarlet with ‘guilt and shame’, came full tilt round the other side of the house and stood silently before her, once more blocking the path to Valuska’s shack, she merely spat, ‘No forgiveness!’ at him and pushed on, for there were only two things that occupied her mind in its present state of fevered activity: the vision of Eszter leaning over the suitcase and understanding how truly trapped he was, and of Valuska, no doubt still lying fully clothed on his bed in that filthy hole of his, stinking of stale tobacco and staring with his brilliant eyes up at the ceiling without realizing that it wasn’t the twinkling night sky above him but a sheet of cracked and badly sagging plaster. And right enough, when after two sharp knocks she pushed the decrepit door open, she found precisely what she expected to find: under a ceiling of badly sagging plaster, in the stink of stale tobacco, the untidy bed; only those ‘brilliant eyes’ were nowhere to be seen … nor for that matter was the twinkling sky above.