The Melancholy of Resistance (18 page)

him
a favour, that a person might of course be perfectly justified in finding such an offer somewhat strange, and then, making a self-deprecatory gesture with his hand, broke into a smile. And in this manner a kind of self-evident benevolence entered, not only his yard, but his life, so that he became utterly dependent on it; a self-sacrificing, invisible, unshakeable, ever industrious, caring kind of benevolence: as Mrs Harrer cared for the fabric of the house, so Valuska protected his employer from himself, while he looked on as his domain perished before his very eyes (was it six, seven or eight years ago? At least seven, he thought). And, to the best of his ability, Valuska preserved him by his sheer presence even when he was not actually there, for the knowledge that he was on his way shielded Eszter from the most serious consequences of his mind’s tendency to self-destruct, or, at least, brought some relief from that tendency, made its effects less painful, diverted disastrous trains of thought constantly aimed at ‘the world’ from fatally striking down the poor fugitive figure that conceived them; in other words, saved him, Eszter—who was a living demonstration of how the fixed ideas of the day, in their short-sighted vanity, wanted to redefine every human institution and were busily tearing apart the fabric of the town and indeed the whole country (which fully deserved its fate) and would have done so had Valuska ‘the genius of the wide-eyed stare’ not awakened him this morning—from paying the bitter price of the destruction wreaked upon life with its indefinable wealth, its organic mechanism based on ‘valid relationships between elements of reality’, by the town and indeed the country, or rather by all the fixed ideas, all those acts of short-sighted vanity, every judgemental train of thought that wanted to view ‘the world’ from its own limited viewpoint. But Valuska had indeed woken him this morning, or maybe it was just the feeling he had first experienced outside the Chez Nous Café which had lasted until this moment of drowsy consciousness, in either case, at that moment he was compelled to understand what it was that his friend’s steadfastness and love protected him from; at that moment he had to recognize that his existence—hitherto based on the twin values of ‘intelligence and good taste’, on his so-called independent and clear thinking and on the ability of his spirit to soar, as he had always secretly believed, above the mundane—was not worth a fly’s fart: it was the moment he had to admit that nothing interested him any more but the steadfast love of his friend. Whenever, in this period of about seven years, he had thought of his young friend it was always as ‘the intangible embodiment of the airy angelic realm at the point where it overflows into the mundane’, something wholly ethereal, wholly transformed into spirit and pure flight, not a creature of flesh and blood but an immaterial being worthy of scientific investigation who entered and left his dwelling almost as a good fairy might; but now he saw him differently: his peaked cap on his head, his postman’s cloak down to his ankles, he enters the house about lunchtime, lightly knocking first, says hello, then, the job being finished, he proceeds down the hall with the food container clanking on his shoulder, on tiptoe in his clumsy boots so as not to disturb the tranquil air of the drawing room, moves further still and reaches the gateway, having lightened, at least until his next visit, the atmosphere of the house which had been heavy with its master’s obsessions, having healed him with his mysterious benevolence, tender care and highly complex ‘simplicity’—and though that simplicity is perhaps a little ridiculous, it is its touching delicacy that surrounds him, that makes it the most natural thing in the world for him to attend to all his master’s needs, that enables him to render service with such absolute and profound constancy. Eszter was wide awake by now but remained perfectly still on the bed, for in his imagination Valuska’s face had suddenly appeared before him, Valuska’s face with its great eyes and high brow, its long red nose like something from a folk tale and his mouth fixed in a gentle smile—and it seemed to him that just as he had discovered the true element of ‘home’ lurking behind the façade of his house, so now, for the first time, he could descry the lineaments of the true face behind the apparent face; that behind the detached ‘celestial aspect’ of Valuska’s features, which in the course of his feverish wanderings would be distilled to an ‘angelic’ glow, he could discover the original earthiness. Which is to say that it was simply
there;
as far as he was concerned the process whereby the face resolved itself into a smile, or having emerged from a solemn mood brightened up again, simply revealed the fact there was nothing further to seek in it: the smile was enough, the solemnity and the brightening were sufficient; he understood that the celestial aspect was no longer of real interest to him, that it was the face and the face alone that mattered to him: it was the face of Valuska not Valuska’s vision of the universe that counted. The sobriety of that face, which wore a perpetual expression of concern for the ordered well-being of the drawing room and its occupant, an order that occupant was forever disarranging, was, thought Eszter, a model of circumspection and conscientiousness, showing a readiness to attend to minor tasks and tiny details, a readiness he himself was now imbued with, having opened his eyes, sat up in bed, looked around and considered what else he should do in preparation for the return of his friend. His original plan was to follow the barricading of the windows and the heating of the rooms with the blocking of the gate and of the door that opened on to the yard, but since the significance of the barricades had radically changed, even in a moment, as had the way he viewed the sheer notion of barricading, the manner in which it had been executed so far and all the other stuffing and padding out of his home, the whole thing having turned into a sorry memorial to his own folly, he decided to devote his entire attention to the question of a room for Valuska, that is to say he would light a fire, tidy up if necessary, prepare the bedding and wait for his enthusiastic helpmate (who was no doubt rambling about town, busily completing his ‘mission’), wait, that is, for the thought of returning to the house in Wenckheim Avenue, as he had promised, to occur to him. He took it for granted that Valuska was doing what he always did, walking the streets somewhere, or had found his way to the event advertised in Hétvezér Passage and got delayed in the crowd, and he became anxious only when he had glanced at the clock a few times and realized that rather than dozing off for a minute or two, he had been asleep for almost five hours; pretty close to five hours anyway, he realized with a shock, and leapt out of bed ready to run in two directions at once, the first to make the fire in the next room, the second—for lack of a window—to dash down to the gate and look out for Valuska. In fact he did neither because he noticed that the fire had gone out in the drawing room, so his first thought was to relight it, and he did so, piling up as much wood as possible with a few bits of newspaper underneath the lot. But the fire refused to start—he had to take the pile of logs apart and relight it twice before the flames leapt up and spread—and even so, this task was as nothing to the one that awaited him in the next room, where he spent an entire hour trying and failing to light a Calor-gas stove that had not been used in years. He tried to recall the method used by Mrs Harrer, but it was no use, the wood resolutely defied all attempts to light it: he piled it into a pyramid, he threw it on loosely, anyhow, he tried flapping the stove door, he blew as hard as he could, but nothing happened, everything remained as it was but for a plume of thick smoke; it was as if in its long period of enforced idleness the stove had forgotten its own function and could not remember what to do in this situation. But by this time Valuska’s intended nest had taken on the look of a battlefield, the floor strewn with sooty planks and boards, ash everywhere, he alone toiling through spots of smoke, escaping into the drawing room every couple of minutes in search of fresh air and glimpsing, in the course of one of these excursions, the state of his smoking jacket, which immediately recalled to his mind the apron Mrs Harrer had left in the kitchen, a thought that should have cheered him up but didn’t until he was on his way into the drawing room again when the soft roar of something catching fire struck his ears and he turned round, reassured that the struggle had not been altogether in vain, for now it was as if someone had unplugged the chimney: the Calor-gas heater was working again. Because it had taken so long to get the fire going, he didn’t think there would be time to remove the boards from the windows that here too gave on to the street, so leaving all the doors as wide as he could, he encouraged the smoke to disperse through the small servants’ room via the kitchen and the hall, then tried to rub his smoking jacket clean of soot, but only succeeded in further begriming it; having wasted some minutes warming to the task, he gave up, donned Mrs Harrer’s apron, and with cloth, broom and pan in one hand and a litter bin in the other hastened into Valuska’s room to remove evidence of the mess he had created. If the vitrines full of porcelain, cutlery and sea-shells and the carved dining table and bed had hitherto, under the custodianship of Mrs Harrer, lent the place a museum-like air, that air was now somewhat singed and the museum looked like something the fire brigade had only just left, a little ruefully perhaps, in response to a call to greater heroism; everything was covered in soot and ash, and if it wasn’t then it was as if he had been afflicted with the curse of Mrs Harrer—he himself besmirched it; though he knew quite well it wasn’t so much the curse of Mrs Harrer but his own excitement and carelessness that were responsible, distracted as he was from his task by the necessity of continually listening out for the long-awaited knock on the drawing-room window which would accord with their agreed arrangement, knowing as they did that the janitor locked the gates in the early evening. Having given the bed a bit of a dust down and loaded up the Calor stove, he decided to abandon the pointless task, thinking they might continue it together in the morning, and returned to the drawing room, where he grabbed a chair and sat down by the fire. He kept glancing at the clock, one minute thinking, ‘It’s already half-past three,’ the next, ‘It’s not a quarter to four yet’—the hour seeming too early or too late depending on his state of mind. At one moment it seemed certain his friend wasn’t coming, either because he had forgotten his promise or because he had decided that not having been able to arrive in time he would under no circumstances disturb him in the middle of the night; at the next he felt sure Valuska was still sitting by the newspaper-collection point in the station, or with the hotel porter at the Komló, where he never failed to call in the course of his nocturnal roaming, and he began to calculate how long it would take him to arrive if it should occur to him to leave at that particular moment. Later there were intervals when he no longer thought in terms of, ‘It’s already a quarter to …’ or ‘It’s not four yet …’ when he seemed to hear someone tapping at the window, and then he hurried to open the gate, looked out, and in the light emitted by the peculiar circus, the cinema and the high illumination of the Komló, which seemed to have gathered a large if aimless-looking crowd, established that no one had in fact knocked, and so withdrew, disappointed, to take up his place again. It also occurred to him that Valuska might have called while he was sleeping, that, no one having answered his knock, he might have decided not to pursue the matter and gone home, or—Eszter speculated—it might be, as had happened, if only rarely, that someone had plied him with drink, possibly at the circus, or more likely at Hagelmeyer’s, where he did in fact call every day, and he was ashamed to appear before him in that state. He considered the now faint, now all too significant clues, lay down, got up, put more fuel on the two fires, then rubbed his eyes and, so as to keep awake, settled down in the armchair that Valuska used in the afternoons. But he couldn’t keep it up: his hips began to ache and his damaged left hand felt as though it was burning; so he quickly decided not to wait any longer, only to reverse the decision a few minutes later, when he thought he’d wait until the big hand reached twelve, but then he woke to realize that the clock showed nine minutes past seven and it seemed as though someone was really rattling the window-pane. He stood up, held his breath and listened in the silence because this time he wanted to be sure he wasn’t imagining it, that his frayed nerves weren’t merely playing tricks on him, but a second bout of knocking resolved all his doubts and swept away any feeling of fatigue owing to his vigil, so by the time he left the drawing room, having drawn the key from his pocket, and was hurrying down the hall, he was fully alert and in keen spirits, and he reached the gate in such a state of freshness and joyous anticipation that despite the stultifying cold as he turned the key, the long, apparently endless hours of waiting seemed merely to form the substance of something he could recount to his visitor, who, unaware that he was no longer a visitor but a lodger, had after all arrived. But to his greatest disappointment it was not Valuska but Mrs Harrer standing before him, moreover Mrs Harrer in a clearly anxious state and behaving most oddly, for before he could take proper stock of her, without any explanation as to what she wanted at this hour, she had slid past him through the gate, run into the hall wringing her hands and made her way into the drawing room, where she did something she had never done before, sat down in one of the armchairs, unbuttoned her coat and looked at him with such a forlorn expression she appeared to have lost her tongue and could only sit there, staring at him with an all too eloquent air of panic. She was wearing her usual outfit, the extra-thick skirt, the lemon-coloured cardigan and the brick-red overcoat, but this was all that brought to mind the Mrs Harrer of the previous morning when, in the secure knowledge that she had done a good job, she had exchanged her buttoned house-slippers for the lined boots she always wore outside, shuffled out and left the house, shouting, ‘Back on Wednesday!’ through the door. She had one hand on her heart while the other hung helplessly at her side, her red eyes had dark rings under them and for the first time Eszter noticed that her cardigan was badly buttoned up—altogether she gave the impression of someone who had been broken by some terrible tribulation that had shaken her to the core, to the extent that she didn’t know where she was or quite what had happened to her and was bitterly waiting for an answer to these questions. ‘I’m still frightened, professor, sir,’ she gasped breathlessly and shook her head in despair. ‘I still can’t believe it’s the end, though,’ her voice broke, ‘the army is already here!’ Eszter stood by the fire, astonished, not having understood a word of this, and when he saw her dissolve in tears again he took a step forward to calm her, but feeling that if she wanted to cry there was nothing he could do, thought better of it and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Believe me, professor, sir, I don’t know if I’m dead or alive …’ She sniffed and pulled a crumpled handkerchief from her coat pocket. ‘I just came because my husband told me I should come, but really, I dunno if I’m dead …’ she wiped her eyes ‘… or alive …’ Eszter cleared his throat. ‘But what happened!’ Mrs Harrer gestured dismissively. ‘I told them before it would happen. I told you, professor, sir, you will remember, when the tower shook in the Göndölcs Gardens. It was no secret.’ Eszter was beginning to lose his patience. Clearly, her husband was drunk again and must have fallen down and struck his head on something. But what had the army to do with this? What does it mean? What does all this chaos add up to? He would have liked to lie down and sleep for just a few hours until Valuska turned up, and that would be about noon now, the usual time. ‘Try starting at the beginning, Mrs Harrer.’ The woman dabbed at her eyes again, then rested her hands in her lap. ‘I don’t properly know where to start. You can’t just begin talking about it like that, because I saw neither hide nor hair of him all day yesterday from morning through to night, and I said to myself, all right, wait till he gets home, I’ll sort him out, as I’m sure the professor will understand, what with him going off just like that with every penny, while I, well I mean he’s honest enough but I’m practically busting a gut with the amount of work I do, though of course it’s what you expect from a drunkard, there’s nothing to be done about it, and me waiting all day for him to come home so I can give him what for. I look at the clock, six o’clock, seven, half-past seven, then at eight, I say to myself, he’ll be properly drunk by now, like a blessed newt, and it’s only yesterday he was nearly dead with a hangover what with his heart, it’s not strong, you know, but at least, I say to him, not on a day like this, not when the whole town is full of those dark-skinned hooligans and something’s sure to happen to him as he staggers home, and on top of it there’s that whale, or whatever they call the blasted thing, don’t forget that, I say to myself. Of course, I might have guessed what would come of it! There I am watching the clock in the kitchen, the washing-up finished, I’ve gone round with the broom, turned the t.v. on and I’m looking at the operetta that was on before but they’re showing it again by popular demand, then out into the kitchen once more to check the time and it’s half-past nine. I’m really worried by then, as he never stays out so long, even when he is really swinish drunk he’s home at that time. When he’s drunk, I mean, he’s no good at all, he’s got to lie down and falls asleep but then he gets cold so he comes home. But no, I’m just sitting there, watching the t.v. without taking it in as I keep thinking about him, what could have happened to him, him being not a young man any more, so he should have more sense, I say to myself, than to wander round the streets at this hour of night, as there’s a lot of them dark-skinned hooligans about making a racket, because I knew quite well what would happen, that things would turn out like this, I said it would be so, as the professor might recall, when the tower shook, but no …’ Mrs Harrer continued, wringing her handkerchief, ‘it’s gone eleven and I’m still sitting in front of the t.v., the national anthem’s come and gone and the set is making that hissing noise but he’s still not back. Well, by that time I couldn’t stand it any more, I went and called in on the neighbours
in case they had any idea. I ring, I knock, I tap at the window, it’s as if they hadn’t heard me, there’s not a stir although they’re home, I mean where else would they be in this weather when the tip of your nose is liable to freeze solid in that deep frost? So I begin to call them, pretty loud, to make sure they know it’s me so they can let me in, and at last they do but when I ask about my husband they don’t know anything. Then, as an afterthought, my neighbour says do I know what’s happening in town tonight? How should I know? I tell them. Well there’s a lot of unrest, a real rebellion. They’re smashing things up all over the place, and I’m thinking my husband’s out there, and believe me, professor, sir, I thought I was going to collapse there right in front of the neighbours, I could hardly stand and just about got home, but once I was in the kitchen I had to sit down on a chair, like a sack, with my head in my hands, like I felt it was going to burst. I thought of all kinds of things, best not even mention them, and the last thing was that maybe he’d come home and hid himself in the laundry room where Valuska lives, as he had often done that before and taken shelter with him until he’d sobered up a bit, Valuska looking after him, but if he’d known the upshot of it my husband never would have gone there, because even if he drinks and runs off with the housekeeping he’s an honest man really, and I couldn’t deny it. So I take a look, open the door and fair enough there’s nobody there so I go back into the house, but I’m so tired by then, what with working all day not to mention the anxiety, I thought I’d faint with exhaustion, so I had another think and decided I would at least occupy myself and brew up some coffee, which would wake me up a bit. The professor knows me after all these years, I haven’t been one to linger over work, but believe me, heaven knows it took me almost half an hour to put the wretched coffee on the gas stove and I hardly had strength enough to unscrew the lid of the jar, I had no power in my arms at all and on top of that I was clumsy as my attention was gone and I kept forgetting what I had gone to do, though eventually I managed to put the pot on and get the flame lit. I drink the coffee and wash the cup, take another look at the time and see it’s midnight so I decide to do something, as anything’s better than sitting in that kitchen and waiting, waiting all the time and him not coming, I’m sure the professor knows what it feels like watching the hands of the clock go round, as I’ve had plenty of opportunity to do, since as long as I can remember, for forty years or so I’ve done little else but work and look at the clock, wondering whether he is coming, Lord knows what I’ve done to deserve a husband like this, I could have done better for myself. Anyway, I made my mind up, threw some clothes on, those you see me in now, but I’d gone only a few steps when I see, pretty close to me, some fifty or so people at the nearest corner, I didn’t need telling who or what they were, I just knew as soon as I heard a loud smash, I looked neither left nor right but got straight back in that house and locked the gate, and I said to myself I must turn the light off, and believe me as I sat there in complete darkness my heart was beating fit to burst as the noise of smashing got nearer and nearer, nor could you mistake that sound. You can’t imagine what I went through then, sir, as I was sitting there, I almost stopped breathing …’ Mrs Harrer broke into fresh sobbing, ‘all by myself with no one to help me in that empty house and I couldn’t even run across to the neighbours now, I just had to sit there and wait to see what would happen. It was dark as death in there, but I shut my eyes too so I shouldn’t see anything, as hearing it was enough as they smashed the two upstairs windows, and I could hear the glass splintering below, four big panes of glass there were, as we’d had the upstairs windows double-glazed, but I didn’t give it a thought then how I’d worked a whole week so we could pay the price of them, I just sat there and prayed to God they’d be satisfied with that, as I was afraid they’d come into the yard and who knows what they’d have thought of doing then, perhaps they’d have demolished the house if it occurred to them. But then God heard my prayer and they went away and I stayed there with those two broken windows listening to my heart thumping as they were smashing the neighbour’s windows by then, but I still didn’t dare turn the light on, God help me, and I didn’t stir for an hour after that, then felt my way about, went into the room, lay down on the bed just as I was, and lay there as if dead, listening carefully, minute by minute, in case they came back to smash the two ground-floor windows. I haven’t the words, don’t even have the time to tell you everything that went through my mind, the end of the world, the gates of hell being opened, all kinds of nonsense, the professor will know far better than me the things I thought of, I just lay there like a plank for hours on end but my eyes wouldn’t stay closed, though the best thing would have been to go to sleep and not have those ridiculous ideas running through my head, because by the time my husband came home, seeing as he finally did get home about dawn, I was in no fit state to be cheerful about him being restored to me, as he wasn’t even drunk but stood by the bed sober as a judge, sat down on the covers just as he was with all his clothes on, in his coat and all, and tried to put my mind at rest as he could see I was lying there hardly full of the joys of spring and practically dead to the world, and I said to myself, pull yourself together, it’s all right, he’s home now, we’ll get by somehow. He brought me a glass of water from the kitchen and when I drank it I started slowly gathering my wits about me so we turned the light on in the room, as I wouldn’t let him do that before, but my husband said it was time to calm down and we should turn it on as it’s on in the kitchen in any case so why should I give myself a headache on account of two broken windows, the council would pay for them. He saw them when he came in the house, as he would of course, the shattered bits lying there in the entrance, though I didn’t even dare look at them, but as he said after he returned from taking the glass back out into the kitchen, the council would deal with it as he had influence there now. By that time I had recovered to the extent that I sat up in the bed and asked him what had happened, where he had been all night, and didn’t he have a drop of humanity left in him? I went on the attack, leaving me alone in an empty house while he was out there, skulking about outside, though what I really wanted to say was heaven be praised, how good to have you back, what a miracle no harm has come to you, but you know how it is, professor, the fear and those dark-skinned hooligans, not to mention the double-glazing in those two windows being gone. But my husband he just sits and hears me out and keeps looking at me in this strange way, and I ask him, for God’s sake, what’s happened? what’s going on? and I am about to tell him all about the windows on the upper floor, but my husband he says, what’s happened has happened and he raises his finger and says from today you’ll have to change your view of me, I’m on the town council or whatever they call it, and what’s more, he says, I’m getting some sort of medal too. Well, professor, sir, you may gather I couldn’t understand a word of this and just stared at him, his head nodding, then he says they spent the whole night in negotiations, no, not in the pub he says, but in the town hall, because he’s involved in a special something or other, some kind of committee that has saved the town from the hooligans. That’s all very well, I answer, but while you’re in session I’m prey to all kinds of dangers here in this empty house, not even being able to turn a light on. To which he answers, stop this nonsense, I was awake the whole night all on account of you and everyone else’s safety, then asks me if there’s anything here to drink, but by that time I was so happy to have him home again, that he was all right, sitting there on the bed beside me, I told where he could find some and he went through to the pantry and fetched the bottle of brandy from behind the jars of preserves, since that’s where I keep it as, sad to say, I have to hide it. I ask him who those people were, those in the street, and my husband replies, sinister forces, but we stopped them all right, they’re being rounded up right now, he says, as the army has arrived and there’s order now, and he takes a swig of the bottle, soldiers everywhere, says he, imagine, they’ve even brought a tank with them, it’s there in Friars’ Walk in front of the church, and I let him take another swig but then said Enough! and put the bottle down beside me on the bed. How did the army get here, I ask him, as I couldn’t imagine a tank there, and he says it was the circus, the circus was behind it all, if the circus hadn’t been here they’d never have dared attack the town, but attack it they did, my husband says, and I can see the gooseflesh running over him too and his face really clouding over, they attacked it, and looted and set buildings on fire, and imagine, he says, poor Jutka Szabó and her friend at the telephone exchange, they were victims, the professor will remember Jutka Szabó’—Mrs Harrer’s eyes filled with tears—‘them too. But people have died, says my husband, and then again I didn’t know if I myself was dead or alive, because apart from the post office this was the first I’d heard,’ she explained, ‘about the soldiers occupying the main buildings, and in the station, he said, they’d found a woman, imagine that, and yes, a child too, but then I couldn’t bear to listen to any more and asked him, how could you say you were defending us with that committee when such things were happening? to which he answers that if the committee didn’t exist, and especially the professor’s wife, who, at least this is what my husband said, was brave as a lion taking up the struggle, I mean if she weren’t there and she hadn’t succeeded in persuading two policemen to try to get through with a car then there would have been no army, and then maybe there’d have been more than two broken windows, four panes I tell him, and even more wounded and dead. Because the police, and my husband was really bitter about this, were nowhere to be found, they had melted away, that’s the way he put it, melted away and were nowhere to be found, except those two who then drove over to the county capital, and there was only one reason that all the police lost their heads, not exaggerating, lost their heads, my husband stressed with a significant look on his face. The chief of police, and here he drew out the long “ee” sound of “chief”, he hates him so much, I don’t know why, and has really hated him some two or three years, so much so that if his name comes up in conversation I hardly recognize him the hate is so strong in him, you wouldn’t believe it, since most people say he’s on good terms with him, though I don’t know the truth of that except he always denies it, in other words that the chief of police, the head of the squad as he put it, is in fact, he explained, the very head that the police have lost, and he grew so red in the face at this point, you could see how intensely he hated him. He was drunk, said my husband, he was so drunk he slept through the entire day, imagine that, the whole day, though they occasionally woke him but it was no use as he wasn’t up to anything, then some time in the early dawn he left the committee and everybody, including the professor’s wife apparently, thought he was off to do something, but no, the two policemen who brought the army back with them confessed they had seen the chief unconscious with drink, he must have got hold of some more drink, because as for the good of the public, as my husband put it, he couldn’t give a flying fart for it. Of course he drinks too, said my husband, but he wouldn’t do anything like that if it was a matter of the public good, he had enough self-discipline to see it through, as for the chief, and again he stretched the “ee” out, no, he gets drunk all over again, to say nothing of the fact that no one knows where to find him, as there were only those two policemen to say they had picked him up when he looked as though he was heading home. Me, I’m just lying down, listening to all these terrible things, but the worst was to come, all the destruction they carried out, all that laying waste, says my husband, and no one knows how many are injured and how many dead, and simply where people are, my husband shook his head he was so fed up with it, because, for example, once the army arrived and the tank was there in front of the church, once people ventured out into the streets again, then right here on the main road, professor, sir, right in front of Nadabán’s butcher’s shop, as he was coming home to reassure me, he met Mrs Virág, who looked just as devastated. She was looking for her neighbour, Mrs Virág told him, who had spent the whole night sitting at her window watching the terrible events, and who had asked her across, she being frightened all by herself, so then they sat at the window together, but, as Mrs Virág said, it would have been better for them not to be sitting there, because it was past midnight when another band of hooligans came down the main road, waving sticks and God knows what, beating to death the stray cats in their path, Mrs Virág told my husband. And apparently they suddenly saw, and my husband deliberately didn’t mention his name, Mrs Virág’s neighbour’s son, as he put it to be precise, but I didn’t suspect anything and that was exactly as my husband wanted it, for he didn’t want me being suspicious, that’s all he said and reached down beside the bed for the brandy bottle, but I told him, don’t you touch that bottle now, and asked him if he was sure it was Mrs Virág. And he answers, yes, Mrs Virág. I’m thinking furiously, but nothing occurs to me, and they’re looking out of the window, my husband goes on, and they can’t believe their eyes, because there is Mrs Virág’s neighbour’s son, there in the thick of the hooligans, you’ll never believe it, he says, don’t even try, you won’t guess, we’ve been harbouring a viper in our bosoms. And I’m just staring at him, still not getting it, who he means, so I ask him and he says the woman, said Mrs Virág, got so wound up she’d never seen anything like it, and she started shouting how she’d had enough,