The stewardess stood up to make room for Korin, who gradually, carefully, arranged himself full-length along the bench but no sooner had he closed his eyes than he had to snap them open again because the door to the street was suddenly thrown open and a whole crowd of people thrust themselves through it, or to put it more precisely, erupted into the office with such brutal force it seemed they wanted to smash everything in their way, impatient of the slightest objection, shouting harsh instructions left and right, fore and aft, to the effect that the person they were delivering, who was now shoved forward in a brilliantly glistening ebony-black wheelchair, and who was now advancing through the ranks of would-be ticket purchasers and employees, had a quite particular reason for bursting in like this and had an absolute right to run people down while no one had any cause or justification to question this privilege; in other words, albeit half a day late, and to Korin’s deepest disappointment but to the stewardess’s great relief, the old woman from Switzerland had finally arrived in her very own skin-and-bone, dried-out body, her face fallen in and scored over with a thousand wrinkles, her gray eyes tiny and lightless, her lips cracked, her ears decked out in an outsize set of gold earrings that dangled right down to her shoulders, her whole presence immediately, silently, declaring that it was with precisely this body, this face, these eyes, these lips and just these enormous earrings that she intended to determine what was going or not going to happen in the next few minutes; nor did she in fact say anything at all, and as to her entourage, it was clear that there was no communication of orders to them either, it being more a case of now a little this way, now a little faster, now a touch slower, while they kept their eyes firmly glued to her, hanging on to her the way the golden earrings did to her ears, until, with one gesture as minimal as the act of breathing she made it clear what she wanted, which way she wanted to go, which route they should take to which desk, a decision that neither the employees nor those waiting for tickets had any power to resist, for those behind the desks stopped working and the queues broke up, simultaneously bringing to an end the situation in which Korin, still cursed with his headache, and the stewardess found themselves, since Korin had, at the very least, after the first moment of terror, to sit up in order to convince himself that the deputation had not come for him, and the stewardess had to snap into action and announce that it was she whom MALÉV had, after the necessary formalities, together with the Helping Hands service, sent to conduct the elderly lady to her chosen, specially selected flight, where she would be her supporter and aide, to be in the strict sense of the word, her guide on the road to the Ferihegy airport.
The meat-filled pancake à la Hortobágy was fine, the old lady’s translator conveyed to the nervous official, but the air — and here every member of the entourage allowed himself a smile — did not meet with Frau Hanzl’s approval, no, eure Luft, as the old lady repeated in her loud, cracked rather masculine voice, shaking her head in a disillusioned manner, ist einfach unqualifizierbar, versteht ihr? unqualifizierbar! after which, having indicated that she wished the computer monitor to be turned in her direction, she jabbed her finger at one of the lines, from which point everything happened improbably fast: no more than a minute or two had elapsed before her entourage was in full possession of a ticket and the stewardess had been informed what her duties were to be regarding “the acutely sensitive Mrs. Hanzl who was in the habit of making all her own arrangements for travel,” and the shiny ebony-black wheelchair containing the acutely sensitive Mrs. Hanzl, was already turning and thundering across the hall toward the exit so that Korin, who was looking this way and that in panic, had barely time enough to dash over to the stewardess and condense into a single sentence everything she absolutely had to know, since, he stared at her in desperation, there was so much he had not had time to say, the most important things in fact, having neglected to inform her of the very reason he had to get to New York and what he had to do there, indicating his coat sleeve and the manuscript of which he had not said a word so far though it was by far the most important aspect of the whole thing and the stewardess would understand nothing if she did not know that, for that manuscript — he grabbed her hand and tried to delay the gathering momentum of the procession — was the most extraordinary piece of writing that anyone had ever produced, but he could talk to the stewardess all he liked for she was no longer listening, having only time enough to smile and beg his forgiveness for having to get on now, in response to which Korin himself could do no more than run ahead, to prop the door open before the on-rushing wheelchair, and raise his voice above the din of the agitated procession of escorts to remark what a wonderful, unforgettable day it had been, and that the young stewardess lady should allow him to file away the two tiny dimples of her smile in his memory forever, to which she replied smiling, with precisely those two tiny dimples, that he was most welcome to file them away, whereupon she waved and disappeared behind the closing door, leaving Korin alone in the suddenly ear-splitting silence with only the eternal memory of those two little dimples to console him.