The Melancholy of Resistance (8 page)

adjusted the strap of his bag, cleared his throat and turned to the grim figure beside him, remarking in a friendly way that he had never seen anything like it in his life, that while the occasional travelling circus might come round from time to time, it was nothing like this, not half as riveting, though he had just arrived, of course, and he simply couldn’t imagine what such an enormous creature might be stuffed with, though it was likely to be wood-shavings, and did he happen to know what the entrance fee might be since he had only some fifty or so forints and would be very sorry if he were to be refused entrance for lack of a few coins. The fellow beside him gave not the slightest sign of having heard any of this confused muttering but kept glaring at the rear of the truck with such awful intensity and seemed so oblivious to all the hubbub round him that even Valuska was rapidly forced to the conclusion that whatever the question, there was absolutely no chance of an answer from the man. At first Valuska was simply aware of a sudden tension in the crowd, then, following the direction of their gaze, he could see the corrugated tin of the truck’s rear door descending, and two fat hands—probably the ones that had clipped it there in the first place from within—sliding it down, then abruptly letting it go halfway through its descent, so when the bottom of it hit the pavement and the side struck the rim there was a tremendous clatter. Valuska, who had been swept to the front of the crowd as it pressed towards the opening, was not at all surprised to find that the whale’s domicile could apparently be opened only from the inside, for, or so he reasoned to begin with, one would naturally expect a company so unusual—and this lot certainly seemed unusual—to come up with a curious solution to such a problem. Furthermore, above and beyond all this, his attention was drawn to a great mountain of flesh, well over six feet high, standing in the now clear ‘entrance’ of the circus, a figure whose role was apparent not only from the fact that despite the intense cold he wore nothing but a dirty vest over his bulging and hairy torso (a ‘factotum’ would in any case be expected to dislike the heat), but from his badly disfigured and generally squashed nose, the effect of which was not so much fierce as foolish, lending him an air of surprising innocence. He raised his arms high into the air, gave a loud grunt as if he had just woken from a long sleep, dropped lightly down among the crowd gathered about the opening, dragged the corrugated sheet reluctantly to one side and propped the battered object up against the truck, then, having lowered three wide wooden boards from the platform, he got out of the way, grabbed hold of a flat metal box and started selling tickets with an expression of such utter weariness and boredom it seemed that neither the line of customers shuffling up the rather shaky ramp nor the almost unbearably tense air of expectancy was of the slightest interest to him; heaven or hell, what’s the difference, as people in those parts used to say. Valuska stood in the line quivering with excitement, clearly enjoying everything: audience, wagon, the iron box, the ticket collector. With a grateful glance at the indifferent behemoth before him he thanked the ticket collector as he took his ticket, relieved that his purse would bear the expense, tried once more to enter into conversation with his ever changing neighbours, then, when his turn finally came round, he too picked his way carefully across the creaking boards, and stepped into the half-lit enormous vacancy of the ‘whale-house’. On a low platform of beams and girders, precisely as the hand-written sign hung on its side proclaimed, lay the terrifying hulk of a ‘sensational blahval’, though any attempt to read the rest of the tiny chalked inscription and thus enlighten oneself as to what exactly a ‘blahval’ might be was bound to result in failure since anyone wishing to hesitate before it was carried forward by the slow press of the crowd behind. The huge creature facing him needed neither pointing out nor rational explanation; Valuska muttered the mysterious name under his breath as he took in the far from common sight, open-mouthed, gaping, with a mixture of fear and wonder. Seeing the whale did not mean he could grasp the full meaning of the sight, since to comprehend the enormous tail fin, the dried, cracked, steel-grey carapace and, halfway down the strangely bloated hulk, the top fin, which alone measured several metres, appeared a singularly hopeless task. It was just too big and too long: Valuska simply couldn’t see it all at once, and failed even to get a proper look at its dead eyes. Having managed to insert himself into the continually shuffling line, he finally reached the creature’s jaws, which were ingeniously displayed wide open, but whether he stared down its dark throat, or tore his gaze away to survey its exterior to discover the two tiny eyes sunk in deep sockets on either side of the body, and noted the two vents in the lower brow above them, he was aware of seeing these things in isolation: it was simply impossible to see the enormous head as an integral whole. It was hard to see properly in any case since the overhead lights had not been switched on, and to stop and enjoy the horror at one’s leisure, to appreciate the mouth so terrifyingly displayed or the vast unmoving tongue inside it, was impossible, though it wasn’t so much the mouth, nor the sheer incomprehensible size of the creature that most astonished him, but the full and certain general knowledge purveyed by the publicity that it had witnessed the wonders of an infinitely strange and infinitely distant world, that this gentle yet terrifying denizen of great seas and oceans was actually here, and one could even take the liberty of touching it. Despite all this, while Valuska stood surprisingly undisturbed in his happy stupor, the others—who continued trudging compliantly round the whale in the stinking gloom—not only showed no signs of being similarly affected but gave the decided impression that the highly visible object of the advertisements itself was of limited interest. True, they cast a few sheepish glances at the petrified giant stranded in the middle, glances which did not entirely lack the proper element of apprehensive respect, but their eyes were restless, skipping about with terror and desire, scanning the entire extent of the wagon, as if there were something else to be found, some hypothetical presence, the very prospect of which would surpass all their expectations. Not that there was anything in that hostile environment, made even less hospitable by whatever light entered it, to encourage such expectations. Just inside the door, on one side of the line, stood a few metal lockers, one of which was open, revealing eight or ten bottles of formalin containing a few wrinkled sad-looking tiny embryos of which no one, not even Valuska, took any notice, and the other end of the wagon was curtained off, though there was one rather large chink through which one could see that there was nothing of any great interest there either, save a basin and a jug of water. Lastly, directly opposite the cavern of the creature’s open mouth, there was a door in the corrugated partition dividing off the rear of the compartment (albeit another door without a handle), a door which might possibly lead to some sort of bedroom for the staff, and though it was here rather than anywhere else that the crowd showed the most obvious signs of excitement, Valuska, if he had noticed any of this at all, would not have understood the reasons for such peculiar behaviour. This was futile speculation in any case for, being completely mesmerized by the whale, Valuska saw nothing but the whale, and having surveyed the far side of the fabulous object and found himself in the open air once more, descending with comparative safety from the high platform, he even failed to register that those who had preceded him in the line and had already been through the experience once were even now returning to the place from which they had all but started, as if, despite having seen the whale, the many hours of waiting had somehow not quite achieved the purpose for which it was intended. It failed to register with him—maybe precisely because he himself had determined to return in the evening in order to solve before anyone else the haunting phenomenon of this strange company with its extraordinarily patient votaries—and so, unlike the night porter, whom he greeted with a cheery wave, he viewed the spectacle as something that far surpassed itself as a circus exhibition, and when the former addressed him in a hoarse whisper, asking, ‘Here, tell me what’s in there … People are talking about aristocracy of some sort …’he fitted the question to his own line of thought and answered him enthusiastically, saying, ‘No, Mr Árgyelán, sir! It’s a grander thing altogether, I assure you! This is regal, positively regal!’ and, cheeks glowing, abruptly left the puzzled gentleman to his astonishment. Clutching his bag to his chest, he squeezed his way through the crowd, and now that he sensed that it was past twelve o’clock, it being a Wednesday, and Mrs Eszter waiting with the ‘laundry bag’, he decided to return home and deal with that, there being enough time to deliver the papers later in the afternoon. So he set out for Híd Road—not suspecting that he would have been better employed in making a dash for it out of town to some distant place of refuge—pacing quickly and stopping dead every so often to take a conspiratorial squint at the sky, soon completing the short distance home and seeing again and again before him, unfocused yet somehow in its entirety, that innocent carcass vaster than imagination which even now filled up his mind, and left him thinking, ‘How enormous! … How extraordinary a creation! … What a deeply mysterious person the Creator must be to amuse Himself with such extraordinary creatures!’ so that, proceeding along this line of thought, it wasn’t long before he had recovered the high ground of his early-morning meditations and could begin to associate them with his experiences in the market square, and, without a word, listening only to the unbroken murmurous dialogue in the depths of his soul, arrive at some conception of the way in which the gentle yet final gestures of the almighty Creator in the act of judgement succeeded in carefully relating His own omnipotence to untold billions of His creatures, right down to the terrifying yet entertaining spectacle of the whale. Now with bowed head, now with head uplifted examining the sky in his characteristic way so that he might once more be wholly absorbed by the silent joy of realizing that everything that existed was linked in some fraternal manner, as part of a single thought, to everything else … he sped past the apparently unpeopled houses of Híd Road. He sped on, propelled across the melancholy silence of Vilmos Ápor Square, down Dürer Street, chilled to the marrow, or rather, somehow overtook himself or divided himself into two, one part speeding on below, the other flying away, gaining height, as if he knew that a crash-landing or sudden petrifying stillness was what awaited him, for when he turned into the gateway of Harrer’s house and ran down the path leading to the old laundry room to push open the door, he was astonished to find someone already there, someone who looked up at him and, presumably disapproving of his ‘radiant expression’, without any preliminaries, rounded on him, demanding: ‘Tell me, why must you go round with that idiotic look on your face? Wouldn’t it be better to lock your door properly? It’s an open invitation to a burglar!’ Since her usual practice was to leave the bag at Harrer’s or to give it to him without crossing the threshold, and not (definitely not!) to come and pass the time of day with him, the unexpected sight of Mrs Eszter, his awesome ‘accomplice’, here among his battered possessions—especially now when her face glowed beetroot red and was veritably swollen with fury on account of the fact—or so it transpired—that she had been waiting there since morning—was almost too much for Valuska, and he flew into such confusion that he genuinely had no idea where he was or what he was doing. Dizzied by this unsought honour and by his own too rapid descent from the empyrean, he blushed from ear to ear with embarrassment (since, for lack of a chair, Mrs Eszter had been forced to install herself on his bed) and hastened to sweep the remnant breadcrust, the lard in its greaseproof wrapper, the empty tin and various onion skins off the stool and on to the floor, then—under the hostile glare of his guest, who was watching him ensconce himself on the freshly cleaned and only available resource for sitting on—tried to kick a few stray socks under the cupboard without her noticing and, with an idiotic grin, attempted to remove a filthy pair of underpants from the bed itself. Whatever he touched, however, far from improving the situation, only served to expose ever more clearly the irredeemable condition of the room, though he refused to give up his hopeless struggle with the mouldy apple core in the corner, the cigarette butts surrounding the oil-stove that were tell-tale signs of Mr Harrer’s visits, and the wardrobe door that refused to close, until Mrs Eszter noticed that he wasn’t paying ‘the blindest bit of attention’ to what she was saying, and angrily screeched at him, commanding him to ‘stop that right now!’ and sit down at last, since she had something extremely important to tell him. There were so many thoughts whirling round his head that for a few minutes he couldn’t even begin to pick up what the well-known grating voice was saying; he kept nodding and blinking and clearing his throat, and while his guest ranted on, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, about ‘the days to come’ and ‘the heavy judgement waiting on the world’, getting quite carried away, he was incapable of responding except by staring at the stool with a fixed expression of ardent agreement on his face. Under the circumstances it didn’t take long for Mrs Eszter suddenly to turn and focus her attention on him, though the little he had begun to comprehend by this time was in any case far from reassuring. For while he was genuinely pleased to learn that his mother and his guest had ‘parted as good friends’ the night before (since his hopes immediately rose that with some assistance from her he might succeed in pacifying Mrs Plauf), he was alarmed at her plan, according to which ‘because of the increasing amount of paperwork and the publicity associated with her new position’ Mrs Eszter was to move, ‘this very
day’, from her currently necessary sub-tenancy back home again, and that he was to send her clothes ahead, ‘thereby exposing the long-term shady arrangement obtaining between her husband and the laundry’, for he was not in the slightest doubt that the delicate health of his elderly and even now rather over-sensitive friend, who trembled at the very mention of his wife’s name, would be severely jeopardized by the impending events. And since it was equally plain to see that all his hard work in attempting to nurse Mr Eszter back to full health as well as improve his conditions of work would come to nothing should his partner succeed in accomplishing her ends, and that it would be very hard indeed to prevent her doing so, it came as a great relief to him when—having mentioned, in passing so to speak, the establishment of a new political movement, and that local people wanted György Eszter and no one else to lead it—she added that since such a significant appointment would bring great honour with it, she would be the happiest and proudest of wives if he were to accept the position (an acceptance, she whispered, that would naturally entail postponement of her plans to move, for if her husband were to carry such a load of responsibility, a load far greater than hers, she wouldn’t for a moment dream of disturbing him), the only problem being that she, Mrs Eszter, unlike Mrs Plauf, she added with a resigned gesture, who felt that the whole matter should be left immediately to Valuska, who was bound to ensure its success, ‘… that I,’ she went on, ‘knowing my husband’s delicate state of health and retiring disposition, have serious doubts as to whether he would accept the arrangement’. Realizing at last what she was on about, Valuska didn’t know what pleased him more—the fact that his mother had perfectly understandably of course, despite her misgivings, turned to him (‘Immediately!’) to resolve this complicated state of affairs, or that Mrs Eszter should reveal a quite unexpected side of her character through an act of such dazzling self-sacrifice. What was quite certain, however, was that he grew highly excited at the thought, leapt to his feet in an excess of enthusiasm and ran about the room attempting to convince his visitor that he ‘would undertake the task’ and do all he could ‘to ensure its success’, an outburst that provoked the generally solemn and severe-looking woman to brief but sincere laughter. This laughter did not signify immediate assent and the guest was persuaded to accept Valuska’s offer only after considerable argument and exhortation, and even having apprised him in the vaguest, most impenetrable terms of all of ‘the essential facts about the movement’, and listed on a piece of paper the names of those ‘whose work and agitprop skills the incoming president should begin to employ this very afternoon’, she proved unbending in the matter of the suitcase and the message, to the extent that once they emerged from behind Harrer’s front door and were proceeding down Dürer Street in the frost which had not abated though it was almost noon, and Valuska was regaling her with an account of the ‘marvellous performance’ in Kossuth Square, she heard him through with total indifference and talked only about the suitcase and the details of her move—and even as they reached the corner of Jókai Street and were on the point of parting, she insisted on repeating that if Valuska did not arrive by four o’clock in the afternoon with word of her husband’s unequivocal agreement, she, Mrs Eszter, would do as she had originally intended, and ‘eat her supper at Béla Wenckheim Avenue’. So saying, she turned on her heels and was away on ‘urgent business’ as she put it, leaving Valuska, with a suitcase full of laundry in one hand and a note in the other, staring after her for almost a full minute, much moved by the certain knowledge that if his old friend had ever doubted ‘the true worth of this exemplary woman’, this act, which was a sure sign of her good-will and readiness to sacrifice her own interests to his, would be enough to convince him. For it was now as clear as day to him whom it was she respected in that apparently harsh and imperious soul of hers, clear from the moment she first sought him out to inform him that henceforth, if Valuska was willing to keep it a secret, she would like to wash her husband’s dirty laundry with ‘her own two hands’, explaining how, through all the preceding years, she had regarded the husband who had so coldly rejected her with such unconditional fidelity and respect that it saturated her entire being. And when he suddenly realized what his guest desired to achieve with this transparent ruse of ‘moving back home’, to wit that she was willing to trust him and persuade him to take part in a political movement, which for all he knew she might have organized with the express purpose of manifesting the wondrous ‘qualities’ of György Eszter before the entire populace, he felt more certain than ever that the lonely occupant of the house in Wenckheim Avenue would no longer be able to resist her extraordinary persistence and would be forced to admit his helplessness in the face of such consuming passion. There was something of a gale blowing up and when he set off he had to fight against the icy blast which wanted to take his breath away; the suitcase was heavy and growing heavier by the minute, the road was slippery and packs of impertinent stray cats lounged lazily before him, slow to clear a way for him, but nothing could disturb his good spirits: he was sure that he had never before set out for his master’s house with such a wealth of good tidings. Today, everything would turn out for the better, because it had been for this that he had set out every day, ever since Mrs Eszter first left the house, since, as carrier of the daily dinner, he had got to know the residence and its solemn master, but, above all, ever since ‘the musicologist, the full extent of whose researches and general importance was as yet hidden from the town, and who endeavoured to hide these gifts through the strict isolation demanded by his sheer modesty, who, furthermore, was practically bed-bound through his physical suffering, this fabulous personage to whom exceptional respect was due’ had, to his utmost amazement, one day declared that he regarded him to be his