The mandarin was Ábel’s first friend, his own private discovery, the only mythical figure he had not found in old tales, but had personally invented. Maybe somebody once said something about what might happen if a mandarin in China were to press a button. Soon after Ábel rebelled against the town he found what remained of an old, dysfunctional bell, and whenever his enemies got him down he pressed the button and arranged their execution. Say he told a lie, for example, and his lie had been discovered: the accuser had to perish. In three short years he had been obliged to order four persons’ executions and in three cases the order had been carried out. Szikár was the first, the biology master who had hit him in fifth grade. The second was Canon Lingen, who had spied on them in the park. The third was Fiala, his classmate in sixth grade, who had betrayed a secret Ábel had entrusted to him. And the fourth was Kikinday, Colonel Prockauer’s friend, who had threatened to write a letter about their doings to his father when he came across them in a bar.
The mandarin was Ábel’s personal secret, someone he never spoke about, not even to the gang. The mandarin lived somewhere in China in a room with yellow wallpaper and had long sharp fingernails, a two-foot-long pigtail, and sat at a lacquered table with the mechanism on top of it. He had but to touch the button with one of those fingernails and someone somewhere in the world would perish. The mandarin was neither good nor evil: he administered justice disinterestedly. If someone in San Francisco looked askance at somebody, or spoke roughly, the mandarin would frown and examine the matter and, having done so, take action. His power extended over the whole planet. He touched the button with those refined long fingernails of his, a button that was no different in Ábel’s opinion from the button on a common doorbell, and someone in a distant corner of the world dropped dead, his head flopping over. Very few people knew this. People in general believed that Szikár, the biology master, drank himself to death, that Canon Lingen died of hardening of the arteries, and that Fiala’s early death was due to tuberculosis. Ábel, however, knew that all this was beside the point: the true cause of death was the mandarin. Ábel regarded himself as the mandarin’s local representative and that it was incumbent on him to act in a disinterested yet, of course, more conscientious spirit in such matters of judgment. The mandarin was Ábel’s most closely guarded secret. Everyone is happy to play the hangman in their imagination. Of the four sentences handed out by Ábel, judgments conducted in utmost secrecy under conditions of emergency in a form of martial law, three were approved by the mandarin and carried out with remarkable expedition. Kikinday, on the other hand, who had been sentenced some years ago, was clearly in a state of conspicuous health, and crossed the bridge now, panting a little but with the greatest possible dignity. Ábel knew the mandarin was simply delaying the execution. The game had long been imbued with a greater significance than he had earlier thought possible. He had recently sought out the instrument of execution, the dysfunctional hall doorbell that had been gathering dust in a drawer. After the resolution of the Fiala case Ábel felt tortured by uncertainty. The judgment, though not in itself unjust, might have been a touch severe, and maybe it would have been enough to commute it to lifelong hard labor, condemning Fiala to work out his time in a bank or the tax office. One can be wrong, thought Ábel. Now here was this Kikinday character…
“Nebulo nebulorum,”
the condemned addresses him with the impeccable courtesy so often remarked in town. “And how do we like being an adult?”
Ábel looks up at Kikinday’s swollen face, the black teeth grimly glimmering under the Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, the whey-colored eyes swimming in the air above Ábel’s head. They cross the bridge together on their way to town. Kikinday asks after Ábel’s father and inquires in due patriarchal manner when Ábel and his friends hope to join up and move to the front. It was the way he questioned Lajos too before he went out. There is no malice in the question, for Kikinday stops every young man between seventeen and nineteen years of age and makes the same inquiry concerning their military plans.
They make their way slowly past the line of poplars, ever closer to town. A thin fog hangs over the river, the kind of early fog expected on very hot days.
Kikinday observes encouragingly that military training takes much less time now than it did in his day.
“You are lucky not to know the meaning of real training,” he sighs. “How would you know? You haven’t hung about in barracks, followed by three or four weeks of drill, no, you can go straight to the front. In my time,” he stretched his arms wide as he always did when talking about “his time,” a time he did not describe in any precise detail but indicated with a gesture that spoke of some half-forgotten, never-to-return golden age of mankind, “in my time we had to squat, lie on our stomachs, and march in the baking heat. Your generation? Three weeks and you’re off.”
Kikinday had wasted few opportunities in recent years to wave his hat at the younger generation as they departed in cattle trucks. He was always first among the local dignitaries at the station bidding farewell to the troops: this role befitted his social standing and established him as a friend to youth.
They took leave of each other by the courtroom. Kikinday made Ábel promise to inform him when he was about to set off on his travels. With the greatest tact Kikinday always referred to such military leave-takings as “setting off on one’s travels.” Tower-like he made his way up the cool steps. Ábel watched him reach one of the landings. He began to feel sick. He himself ascended the three steps that formed the entrance to the school with great care. The class was standing in a semicircle under the linden tree. He squeezed himself in at the end of a line, the form master sitting at the center with an expression of the greatest historical gravity while Béla and Tibor lay like two chained mastiffs couchant at his feet. The photographer had set up his equipment complete with black cloth and was barking out a few words of instruction, the last words of instruction they would ever hear in this yard. At the very last moment, just as the camera was about to click, he quickly spun around and turned his back to it. Ernõ noticed and did the same. And so the class ceremonially entered the school gallery’s version of eternity.
“Future generations may well scratch their heads,” said Ábel, “wondering who they were, those two figures turning their backs on immortality.”
The various groups dispersed while they hung back, loafing in the sunshine, sleepless and shivering. Béla’s teeth were chattering from exhaustion.
“I must sleep,” he said. “I can’t go on now. Till tonight then.”
“Till tonight.”
Ernõ suddenly butted in.
“I went by his place this morning,” he whispered.
They stopped and listened with downcast eyes, somewhat coldly and against their wills, as he quickly continued.
“He wouldn’t let me in. He spoke through the door, saying he was all right, he felt fine. He said not to wait for him.”
A deep silence followed his words and he himself suddenly fell silent. Tibor lit a cigarette and offered a light to the others.
“Then we don’t wait,” he shrugged, perfectly courteous. He stood there for a while, then extended his hand for them to shake. “Very well then, tonight.”
Then he linked arms with Ábel.
They had to wait at the swimming pool. It was still the hour set aside for women. They sat down on a bench by the ticket office. The smell of rotting boards, damp sludge, and the familiar stench of stale underwear hit them. They could hear the women’s cries.
“Hairdressers,” said Tibor.
The leaden weight of the heat smoothed the water and gave it a metallic sheen. The heat was sticky, dense, almost tangible. Tibor leaned back and started whistling.
“Please stop whistling,” said Ábel.
Tibor examined his nails. In a distracted singsong voice he declared: “I don’t like the look of Mother. Her behavior was distinctly odd this morning. But what I meant to say was…we’re seeing Havas at two.”
He whistled a few more bars and blinked at the river, his mind elsewhere.
“What I really meant to say,” he continued, “was that half an hour ago I walked into the local recruiting office. The commanding officer there is a reliable officer of my father’s. I volunteered. He in turn gave me permission to enlist as a volunteer. I start tomorrow morning, first thing.”
When Ábel did not respond he put his hand on his knee.
“Don’t be angry, Ábel. I just can’t go on like this.” He raised his arm and indicated everything around him. “I can’t go on like this,” he repeated. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
He rolled a cigarette, sat down on the wooden railings of the bridge, and dangled his feet over it.
“What do you think we should do? I think everyone could take away whatever was important to them from The Peculiar tonight…I must return the saddle whatever happens.”
He licked the cigarette, lit it, and when he had waited for some time in vain for a response, he repeated uncertainly:
“What do you think?”
Ábel stood up, leaned against the boards of the cabin. His skin looked gray and pale but his voice was calm.
“So it’s over.”
“I think so.”
“The gang, The Peculiar, are all over?”
“I think so.”
“In that case there’s something I must tell you,” he said and took a deep breath. “I should have told you long ago, I wanted to tell you. Please don’t be cross, Tibor, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
He rested his head against the wall. In a plain, almost chatty way he said: “I had to tell you this just once. I love you. Does that surprise you?” He stretched out his arms, and quickly, feverishly continued, his voice reassuring. “Don’t be angry, but I’ve suffered a great deal on your account. More than a year now. I myself can’t explain what it is I love about you. I had to tell you sometime. Maybe it’s because you are beautiful. You’re not, if I may say, particularly bright. You must forgive me saying so because I’m an unhappy creature. I would give you everything I own, whatever I am likely to own in the future. Do you believe me?”
Tibor leapt off the railings, threw away his cigarette, seized Ábel’s arm, and tugged at it frantically.
“You must swear!”
He was shaking Ábel with all his power in sheer desperation.
“I swear…”
“You must swear that you’ll never mention this again.”
“I’ll never mention it again.”
“You want to remain friends?”
“Yes.”
“So not another word about it, all right?”
“Not a word.”
They were breathing hard. Tibor let go of Ábel’s arm, sat down on the bench, and put his head in his hands. Ábel slowly crossed the bridge, stopped, leaned against the railing and out over the water. Someone’s feet were tapping on the bridge behind them. Tibor waited until the steps died away, then moved over to Ábel, leaned on his elbows beside him, and put an arm around his shoulder. He had tears in his eyes.
“Do you believe in God?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think?” he asked timidly. “I think we will survive.”
They looked at each other. Tibor leaned towards him carefully and, very gently, touched his face with his hands, first on the left side, then on the right. For a moment they stared at each other, then Ábel threw himself to the ground, facedown in the earth. He was shaken by wild uncontrollable sobs, his hands scrabbling in the mud as he pressed his face into the softness, his whole body racking and tossing. He wept quietly, at the back of his throat, with a slight wheeze. Then he stopped moving and lay there a long time while his weeping subsided. When he sat up he wiped his face with his muddy hands and looked wearily around him.
“It’s finished, I think,” he said slowly, with surprise. “I’m quite certain now that we will survive.”
He looked straight ahead and gave a shiver.
“I wasn’t so sure of it before.”
A
T PRECISELY TWO O’CLOCK THEY STOPPED OUT-
SIDE
the pawnbroker’s. It was the only two-story house in the passage. The gray heat spread everywhere, thick as glue. Metal shutters covered the entrance. They rang at the side door and waited, and when no one answered, Tibor turned the door handle and led the way in. The damp sour smell of cabbages greeted them in the dim stairwell, where narrow wooden steps led up to the pawnbroker’s apartment.
Plaster was peeling from the wall. Dirt, cobwebs, a squalid sense of neglect enveloped them.
“Are you scared?” asked Ábel.
Tibor stopped and looked around.
“No,” he said uncertainly. “Not exactly. What I feel is loathing, just as the actor said I would. And the air is foul.”
He turned round.
“Leave it to me and don’t say anything,” he said quietly.
They had dined at the riverside café, having spent the remainder of the morning in silence. Only occasionally did Tibor emerge from the water and venture onto the shore to lie on his back, gently rocking. They had undressed in the same cabin, their talk general and louder than usual, Ábel laughing a lot, rather nervously, and once outside they shouted ribaldries at each other across the banks. They seized every chance of rendering the memory of what had earlier passed between them as uninteresting as possible. They talked of things that were of no great consequence, of their plans, of what the future might have to offer should things work out well, providing that the insignificant event that was waiting for them—the enlisting and what Kikinday had tactfully referred to as “setting off on their travels”—did not prevent them. Tibor wanted to set up a stud farm in the lowlands. Why specifically a stud farm he could not say, but he confessed that he had been reading up on the subject and had secretly struck up acquaintance with horse dealers. Having dwelt on this for a while he suddenly stopped as if he had just woken up and courteously asked: And you?