Satantango

Thoughts

There's a lot to say about this book, and there's a reason there's a highly regarded 7 hour movie based on it. It's incredible, the prose, the story, the philosophical, political journey. This book is hard to put down, can't wait to read his other novels.

Here's a great Reddit post discussing theme and analysis of the story: Satantango - an explanation of the novel

Highlights

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The First Part 🔗

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I
NEWS OF THEIR COMING 🔗

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He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity . 🔗

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Death, he felt, was only a kind of warning rather than a desperate and permanent end. 🔗

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the light in the kitchen dimmed as if it were dusk and it was hard to know whether the gently vibrating patches on the wall were merely shadows or the symptoms of the despair underlying their faintly hopeful thoughts. 🔗

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II
WE ARE RESURRECTED 🔗

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The taller of the two men assures his companion, saying, “The two clocks say different times, but it could be that neither of them is right. Our clock here,” he continues, pointing to the one above them with his long, slender and refined index finger, “is very late, while that one there measures not so much time as, well, the eternal reality of the exploited, and we to it are as the bough of a tree to the rain that falls upon it: in other words we are helpless.” 🔗

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Irimiás scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army. 🔗

• [N] Irimias and Petrina show up at the bar

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III
TO KNOW SOMETHING 🔗

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error due to distraction or carelessness increased the danger and the consequences were far graver than a man might think: one superfluous movement might mask a sign of the onset of vulnerability; a matchstick or brandy glass in the wrong place was a monument to the destructive effects of declining memory, not to mention the fact that it necessitated further modifications of behavior, so, sooner or later, it would mean reconsidering the place of the cigarette, the notebook, the knife and the pencil too, and soon “the whole system of optimal movement” would be obliged to change, chaos would ensue and all would be lost. 🔗

• [N] The doctor at his window in his chair

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The doctor ignored the unbearable smell as he did everything else that did not directly impinge on his observation post, and the more he ignored such things the more attention and expertise he devoted to maintaining the order around him—the food, the cutlery, the cigarettes, the matches and the book—all with the correct distance between them on the table, the windowsill, the area round the armchair and the fiercely aggressive rot on the already ruined floorboards, and at dusk he would feel a warm glow, a degree of contentment, on surveying the suddenly darkening room, recognizing that everything was under his firm, omnipotent control. He had been aware for months that there was no point in further experimentation but then he realized that, even if he wanted to, he was unable to make the slightest change to any of it; no modification could conclusively be proved better because he was afraid that in itself the desire for change was only a subtle sign of his failing memory. So, doing nothing, he simply remained on the alert, careful to preserve his failing memory against the decay that consumed everything around him 🔗

• [N] The doctor maintaining order in light of his memory declining

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He decided to watch everything very carefully and to record it constantly, all with the aim of not missing the smallest detail, because he realized with a shock that to ignore the apparently insignificant was to admit that one was condemned to sit defenseless on the parapet connecting the rising and falling members of the bridge between chaos and comprehensible order. However apparently insignificant the event, whether it be the ring of tobacco ash surrounding the table, the direction from which the wild geese first appeared, or a series of seemingly meaningless human movements, he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off it and must note it all down, since only by doing so could he hope not to vanish one day and fall a silent captive to the infernal arrangement whereby the world decomposes but is at the same time constantly in the process of self-construction. 🔗

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one had to compile and comprehend such signs as still remained in order to discover the means whereby the perfectly maintained memory’s sphere of influence might be extended and sustained over a period. 🔗

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His imagination was bewitched almost to the point of paralysis by the notion that this estate with its rich, generous soil was, only a few million years ago, covered by the sea . . . that it had alternated between sea and dry land, and suddenly—even as he conscientiously noted down the stocky, swaying figure of Schmidt in his soggy quilted jacket and boots heavy with mud appearing on the path from Szikes, hurrying as if he feared being spotted, sliding in through the back door of his house—he was lost in successive waves of time, coolly aware of the minimal speck of his own being, seeing himself as the defenseless, helpless victim of the earth’s crust, the brittle arc of his life between birth and death caught up in the dumb struggle between surging seas and rising hills, and it was as if he could already feel the gentle tremor beneath the chair supporting his bloated body, a tremor that might be the harbinger of seas about to break in on him, a pointless warning to flee before its all-encompassing power made escape impossible, and he could see himself running, part of a desperate, terrified stampede comprising stags, bears, rabbits, deer, rats, insects and reptiles, dogs and men, just so many futile, meaningless lives in the common, incomprehensible devastation, while above them flapped clouds of birds, dropping in exhaustion, offering the only possible hope. 🔗

• [N] Contemplating geology as he watches these minute details, significance is relative

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For minutes on end he could not tell whether he was really hearing howls of pain, or whether it was simply that his years of long, exhausting work had rendered him incapable of distinguishing between the general noise and ancient prehistoric screams that were somehow preserved in time (“The evidence of suffering does not disappear without trace,” he hopefully remarked) and now were being raised by the rain, like dust. 🔗

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There was one special picture—though the rank of favorites did change in due course—an aerial shot, that greatly appealed to him: an enormous, ragged procession winding over a desertlike terrain leaving behind them the ruins of an embattled town billowing smoke and flames, while ahead, waiting for them, there was only a large, spreading dark area like an admonitory blot. And what made the photograph particularly worthy of note was the equipment appropriate to a military observation post that—redundant at first sight—was just about visible in the bottom left-hand corner. He felt the picture was important enough to deserve close attention because it demonstrated with great confidence, in real depth, the “all but heroic history” of a perfectly conducted piece of research focused on essentials, research in which observer and observed were at an optimal distance from each other and where minuteness of observation was given particular emphasis, to the extent that he often imagined himself behind the lens, waiting for the precise moment when he might press the button on the camera with absolute certainty. Even now it was this picture he had picked up almost without thinking: he was familiar with it down to the most minute detail but every time he looked at it he lived in hope of discovering something he hadn’t yet noticed. However, despite wearing his glasses, it all looked a little blurry to him this time. 🔗

• [N] What's with this picture?

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IV
THE WORK OF THE SPIDER I 🔗

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he felt he had forged some vague comradeship with Kerekes, the only sort of which he was capable, not only because of his easily wounded self-regard but because his very cells protested against the possibility that he should behave differently from any other coward: terrified complicity was the only available option. 🔗

• [N] Malice re. Kerekes at the bar

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Now that everything had gone quiet, in the absolute dark of his blindness he felt as if he were deaf too, that everything around him had become weightless, right down to his own body, his ass, his arms, and the legs spread wide below him, and that any capacity he might have had in the realms of touch, or taste, or smell, had also deserted him, leaving nothing but the throbbing of blood and the calm workings of his organs to disturb his utter lack of consciousness, the mysterious core of his anxiety having withdrawn into its own infernal darkness, into the forbidden territories of the imagination, from whence it was obliged, time and again, to break free. 🔗

• [N] Kerekes in the silent bar

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he had confessed to himself that his comfortable life, which had slipped uneventfully into his fifty-second year, was as insignificant in the great rank of competing lives as cigarette smoke in a burning train. 🔗

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The table beside Halics made a creaking noise and the rotting wood of the bar gave a slow sigh like the quiet easy movement of an old carriage wheel over the buzzing chorus of horseflies: it conjured the past but it also spoke of perpetual decay. And as the wood creaked the wind outside, like a helpless hand searching through a dusty book for some vanished main clause, kept asking the same question time and again hoping to give a “cheap imitation of a proper answer” to the banks of solid mud, to establish some common dynamic between tree, air and earth, and to seek through invisible cracks in the door and walls the first and original sound, of Halics belching. 🔗

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And so the images moved silently past his eyes in ever more stilted sequence, as if everything man might hold dear and consider vital to protect existed as part of some independent, indissoluble system, and while one’s memory was still functional enough to furnish it with a degree of certainty and bring into existence its lightly fleeting now, as well as validating the living strands of the rules of the system in the open field of events, one was forced to bridge the gap between memory and life not with a sense of freedom but rather bound by the cramped satisfaction simply of being the possessor of the memory; and so at this stage, given the first opportunity of bringing these things to mind, he felt the terror in everything that had happened, though pretty soon he would begin to cling to the memory with an ever greater jealous possessiveness, however often “in the few years still remaining to him” the memory recurred, right down to the last time he conjured these images while leaning out of the tiny north-facing window of the farmhouse at the most miserable time of night, alone and sleepless, waiting for dawn. 🔗

• [N] Gorgeous

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The entire end-of-October night was beating with a single pulse, its own strange rhythm sounding through trees and rain and mud in a manner beyond words or vision; a vision present in the low light, in the slow passage of darkness, in the blurred shadows, in the working of tired muscles; in the silence, in its human subjects, in the undulating surface of the metalled road; in the hair moving to a different beat than do the dissolving fibers of the body; growth and decay on their divergent paths; all these thousands of echoing rhythms, this confusing clatter of night noises, all parts of an apparently common stream, that is the attempt to forget despair; though behind things other things appear as if by mischief, and once beyond the power of the eye they no longer hang together. 🔗

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his cataract-gray eyes of water covered in frog-spawn in the courtyard wells of long-abandoned houses; 🔗

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Because in Halics’s eyes Mrs. Schmidt was the embodiment of summer, a never-to-be season unattainable to one acquainted only with “the ruins of autumn, a winter without desire” and a hyperactive but frustrating spring. 🔗

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“I’m leaving! Drop dead the lot of you, just the way you are. I hope you get struck by lightning. Why don’t you all just kick the bucket. Drop dead right now!” She was suddenly full of big, indefinite (but chiefly big) plans: she saw lights; rows of illuminated shops with the latest music, expensive slips, stockings and hats (“Hats!”) floated before her; soft furs cool to the touch, brilliantly lit hotels, lavish breakfasts, grand shopping trips and nights, the NIGHTS, dancing . . . 🔗

• [N] Mrs Schmidt fantasizing about irimias

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V
UNRAVELING 🔗

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From that time on, her days were filled with cramping anxiety and she hid herself behind the barn or, sometimes at the end of the house under the eaves because from there she could keep an eye on the kitchen door so that, though they couldn’t see her from there, if they called she could appear immediately. Having to be constantly on the alert soon played havoc with her emotions: her attention was almost exclusively restricted to the kitchen door, but she registered that with such keen sharpness it almost amounted to acute pain, every detail of the door impinging on her at once, the two dirty panes of glass above it, through which she glimpsed flashes of lace curtains fixed there with drawing pins, and below it, splashes of dried mud, and the line of the door handle as it bent toward the ground; in other words a terrifying network of shapes, colors, lines; not only that, but the precise condition of the door itself as it changed according to her curiously chopped-up sense of time, in which possible dangers presented themselves every moment. 🔗

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The joy and pride that swelled within her from moment to moment, sent her imagination into feverish overdrive, so she felt she hardly needed to stir, her power being such that it must bear down on the cat with irresistible force; in fact the consciousness of her own inexhaustible grandeur (“I can do anything, absolutely anything with you . . . !”) confused her a little at first, presenting her with a completely unknown universe, a universe with her at the center, unable to decide anything given the vast range of choice available to her, though the moment of indecisiveness, that happy sense of saturation was soon enough broken, and she could see herself stabbing through Micur’s terrified, sparkling eyes with their deathly glow, or, in one movement ripping off her forepaws, or simply hanging her from every damn hook or cramp at once. Her body felt strangely heavy and she felt an ever-keener, ever more alien kind of self-consciousness. The fierce desire for victory had all but vanquished her old self, but she knew whichever way she turned she was bound to trip, to fall right through the floor and that, at that last moment, the sense of determination and superiority positively radiating from her would be deeply injured. She stood there stiffly, watching the phosphorescent glow in the cat’s eyes, and suddenly realized something that had never before occurred to her: looking into the light of those eyes she understood the terror, the despair that might almost make another being turn against itself; the helplessness whose last hope was to offer itself up as prey on the chance that that way it might yet escape. And those eyes were like spotlights cutting through the darkness, unexpectedly illuminating the last few minutes, the moments of their struggle when they were now apart, now clinging to each other, and Esti watched helplessly as everything she had slowly and painfully constructed in and of herself was laid flat as at a single blow. The rafters, the “window,” the planks, the tiles, the hooks and the walled-off entrance to the loft once again drifted back into her consciousness though—like a highly disciplined army waiting for the word of command—they had moved from their appointed places; the lighter objects were receding little by little, the heavier ones, strangely enough, were getting closer, as if everything had sunk to the bottom of a pond where the light no longer reached and where the direction, speed and momentum of their movements would be determined by weight. Micur lay flattened on the rotting boards across a spread of dried pigeon droppings, every muscle tense to the point of snapping, the outlines of her body a little lost against the darkness, so the cat seemed to be swimming toward her in the dense air, and she only came to full consciousness of what she had done when she seemed to feel the cat’s warm, violently pulsating stomach and the skin with its various lacerations and the blood trickling between them. She was choking with shame and regret: she knew her victory could never be made good now. If she started moving toward her, to stroke her, it would be in vain, Micur would just run away. And that this is how it would remain forever: useless now to call her, useless to hold her in her lap, Micur would always be at the ready, her eyes would always retain the terrifying, ineradicable memory of this flirtation with death that would force her to make the last move. Until now she had always believed that it was failure only that was intolerable, but now she understood that victory too was intolerable, because the most shameful element of the desperate struggle was not that she remained on top, but that there was no chance of defeat. 🔗

• [N] Disturbing scene with Esti and the cat, powerful emotion

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Lost for ideas, she stood there like an orphan, the cardigan hanging down to her knees. She longed to flee this dark place, escaping the oppressive silence, and because she no longer felt secure there, she was scared alone, in case something might leap out at her from a dark corner, or that she herself might walk right into an icy extended hand. 🔗

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He reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out the paper bag. “Fucking hell! What’s this?!” He raised the bag and examined the writing. “For fuck’s sake! This is rat poison! Where did you get this?!” Esti couldn’t get a word out. Sanyi bit his lip. “Fine. I know anyway . . . It’s from the barn and you stole it! Right?” He pressed the bag. “So what did you want it for, my little retard? Be nice and tell big bro!” Esti didn’t move a muscle. “I see it now. A pile of dead bodies back home, right?” the boy continued, laughing. “And I’m next in line, eh? OK. Now let’s see if you have a spark of courage in you! There you are!” He pushed the bag back in the cardigan pocket. “But be careful. I’ve got my eyes on you!” Esti started running toward the bar, waddling a little, like a duck. “Easy now! Be careful!” Sanyi shouted after her: “Don’t use it all at once!” 🔗

• [N] Wild disturbing scene. Esti is so traumatized, her life is miserable, she poisons a cat in hopes her brother will appreciate her, just brutal

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She couldn’t understand what had happened to the doctor, to the one man who once “had spent the whole night at her bedside, wiping the perspiration from her brow,” why she had to wrestle with him to hold on to him and to prevent him from pushing her away but, in any case, she simply couldn’t let go of the edge of his coat and only gave up when she saw that everything around them—suddenly—was caving in and rising up, and it was hopeless trying to detain the doctor because, at last, it was all over, and she watched terrified as the earth opened under them and the doctor disappeared in the bottomless pit. She started to run, with a chorus of baying voices, like wild dogs, pursuing her and she felt it was the end, that she could do no more, that the howling voices were bound to seize her and grind her into the mud, when it suddenly fell silent, with only the humming of the wind and the soft explosions of a million tiny raindrops covering the ground around her. 🔗

• [N] Man it just gets more gut wrenching. The doctor rejects her plea for comfort

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She felt a more naked kind of peace now: the trees, the road, the rain, even the night, all radiated calm. “Whatever happens is good,” she thought. Everything was simple at last, forever. She saw the rows of naked acacia on either side of the road, the landscape that vanished into the dark within a few yards of her, was aware of the rain and the stifling smell of mud, and knew for certain that what she was doing was absolutely right. She thought over the events of the day and smiled as she understood how they all connected up: she felt it was neither chance, nor accident, but an unutterably beautiful logic that was holding them together. She also knew she was not alone, since everything and everyone—her father up above, her mother, her siblings, the doctor, the cat, these acacias, this muddy track, this sky and the night below it, all depended on her, just as she depended on everything else. 🔗

• [N] Damn, she kills herself with the rest of the rat poison. Genuinely one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.

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VI
THE WORK OF THE SPIDER II 🔗

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And the ridiculous 🔗

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His eyes wanted to seize the Entirety at once, but in his excitement he could only concentrate on the “maddening sequence” of the Details. 🔗

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It was all one happy dream. Ah, but if he had known how hopeless it was, how unsuited he was to her desires, he would anxiously have retreated to the storeroom once again to nurse his fresh wounds, protected there from the hostile looks of others, and escape the gleeful mocking he would have had to face. Because he couldn’t even begin to guess that what he took for the come-on looks of Mrs. Schmidt, apparently aimed at Kráner, Halics, the headmaster, and he himself, and the way she led them into this dangerous whirlpool of desire with her languorously extended limbs, was only her way of filling the time while every inch of her imagination was given over to Irimiás, her memories of him beating at “the grassy cliffs of her consciousness like a roaring sea in a storm” that, combined with exciting visions of their future life together, served to intensify her hatred and loathing of the world around her, a world to which “she must soon bid adieu.” And if, now and then, it happened that she swayed her hips or allowed greedy eyes to feast on the sight of her notable bosom, it was not just to make the remaining, highly tedious hours fly faster, but because it was preparation for the much longed for meeting with Irimiás, at which point their two hearts “might be conjoined in recollected pleasures.” Kráner and Halics (and even the headmaster)—unlike the landlord—were perfectly clear there was no hope for them: their arrows of desire dropped at Mrs. Schmidt’s feet with a hollow sound, but this way, at least, they could remain resigned to the pointlessness of their desire: the desire, at least, would survive without its object. 🔗

• [N] All the fellas desire Mrs Schmidt and her boobs

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As his first fit of rage passed (“These people are hopeless! What to do? Surely we must be methodical about this, we can’t leave everything from one day to the next . . .”) his attention was divided between Mrs. Schmidt and the detailed working out of such a plan, but he quickly dropped the latter because he was firmly of the opinion, based on long years of experience, that “at any given time one should concentrate only on one given thing.” 🔗

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Futaki had, in his youth, been “a lover of machines” and retained that love even now when he resembled nothing so much as a small drenched bird, muddied and fouled with his own vomit; and because he knew the precision and order demanded even of the workings of a simple pump he thought that, if a functioning universal principle did exist somewhere (“as it plainly does in machines!”), then (“you can bet your life on it!”) even a world as mad as this must be subject to reason. 🔗

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“Cowards! Worms! Haven’t any of you the guts to take a turn with me?!” Halics was not going to be called a coward by anyone and leapt to his feet, pretending not to hear his wife calling (‘You stay where you are!’). He bounded up to Mrs. Kráner. “Time for a tango!” he cried and straightened his back. Kerekes didn’t even give them a glance so Halics simply grabbed Mrs. Kráner by the waist and started dancing. The others cleared a space for them, clapping, cheering, and encouraging them, so not even Schmidt could stop himself laughing because they did present a truly irresistible spectacle, Halics, at least a head shorter than his partner, cavorting around Mrs. Kráner while she swung those enormous hips of hers without moving her feet. It was as if a wasp had got into Halics’s shirt and he was trying to get it out. The first csárdás finished to loud cheers, Halics’s breast was bursting with pride and he could barely refrain from bellowing at the approving crowd: “See! See! That’s me! That’s Halics!” The next two turns of csárdás were even more spectacular, Halics surpassing himself with a series of complex, quite inimitable manoeuvres, though he did interrupt these with one or two statuesque poses in which he would all but freeze, with his left or right arm above his head, his body seemingly hollowed out, waiting for the next heavy beat so that he might extend his extraordinary and unique moment of glory with more demonic caperings around the puffing and whooping figure of Mrs. Kráner. Each time a dance was over Halics, would demand a tango, and when Kerekes finally relented and struck up a well-known tune, beating out the rhythm with his great heavy boots, the headmaster could no longer resist and strode up to Mrs. Schmidt, who had been woken by the racket around her, and whispered in her ear: “May I have the pleasure?” Once they started, finally he could clap his right hand on Mrs. Schmidt’s back, the scent of her cologne immediately overwhelmed him and held him entranced, so the dance began a little clumsily, if only because he was desperate to hug her close and lose himself in her hot, radiant breasts; in fact he had to exercise supreme self-control to maintain the “obligatory distance” between them. But it wasn’t an altogether hopeless situation because Mrs. Schmidt dreamily pressed herself ever closer to him, so close, in fact, he thought his blood would boil over, and when the music took a still more romantic turn she actually rested her tearful cheeks on the headmaster’s shoulder (“You know dancing is my one weakness . . .”). At that point the headmaster could bear it no longer and awkwardly kissed the soft folds of Mrs. Schmidt’s neck: then, having realized what he’d done, he immediately straightened up but didn’t get to apologize because the woman silently yanked him back to her. Mrs. Halics, whose mood had changed from fierce and active hatred to dumb contempt, naturally observed all this: nothing could remain hidden from her. She was fully aware of what was going on. “But my Lord, our Savior, is with me,” she muttered, firm in her faith, and was only wondering why judgment was so slow in coming: where was the hellfire that would surely destroy them all? “What are they waiting for, up there?!” she thought. “How could they look down on this seething nest of wickedness ‘straight out of Sodom and Gomorrah’ and yet do nothing?!” Because she was so sure that judgment was imminent, she waited ever more impatiently for her own moment of judgment and absolution, even though, as she had to admit, she had sometimes—if only for the odd minute—been tempted by the devil himself to take a nip of wine, and then, under the influence of the Evil One, been constrained to look with sinful desire upon the devil-possessed Mrs. Schmidt’s undulating figure. But God exercised firm governance over her soul and she would fight Satan alone, if need be: just let Irimiás, he who had risen from his own ashes, arrive in time to support her, for she could not be expected, all by herself, to bring an end to the headmaster’s invidious assault. She could not help but see that the devil had gained a complete, if momentary victory—that being the devil’s aim—over those gathered in the bar, for, with the exception of Futaki and Kerekes, they were all on their feet, and even those who could not grab a part of either Mrs. Kráner or Mrs. Schmidt stood close to them, waiting for the dance to end so they could take their turn. Kerekes was tireless, beating out the rhythm with his foot behind “the billiards table,” and the impatient dancers would not allow him any time to rest and drain a glass between numbers, but kept putting ever more bottles beside him on the table, so he should not flag in his efforts. Nor did Kerekes object but kept going, one tango after another, then simply repeating the same one over and over again, though nobody noticed. Of course Mrs. Kráner couldn’t keep pace; her breath came short, the sweat poured off her, her legs were burning and she didn’t even wait for the next dance to finish but suddenly turned on her heels, left the excited headmaster and dropped back in her chair. Halics ran after her with a pleading, accusing look: “Rosie, my dear, my one and only, you’re not going to leave me like that, are you? It would have been my turn next!” Mrs. Kráner was wiping herself down with a napkin and waved him away, gasping, “What are you thinking of! I’m no longer twenty!” Halics quickly filled a glass and pressed it into her hand. “Drink this, Rosie darling! Then..! . . .” “There won’t be any ‘then’!” Mrs. Kráner retorted, laughing. “I don’t have the energy, not like you youngsters!” “As concerns that, Rosie dear, I’m not exactly a child myself! No, but there’s a way, Rosie dear! . . .” But he was unable to continue because his eyes now wandered to the woman’s rising and falling bosom. He took a swallow, cleared his throat and said, “I’ll get you a croissant!” “Yes, that’d be nice,” Mrs. Kráner said gently once he’d gone, and wiped her dripping brow. And while Halics was fetching the tray she gazed at the ever-energetic Mrs. Schmidt who twirled dreamily from one man to the other in the course of the tango. “Now, let’s get this down you,” said Halics and sat down very close to her. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, one arm around Mrs. Kráner—without risking anything since his wife had finally fallen asleep by the wall. Silently they munched the dry croissants one after the other, which is how it must have happened that the next time they reached for one their eyes met, because there was only one croissant left. “There’s such a draft in here, can’t you feel it?” the woman said, fidgeting. Halics, gazed deeply into her eyes, his own eyes squinting because of the drink. “You know what, Rosie darling,” he said, pressing the last croissant into her hand. “Let’s both eat it, OK? You start from this side, me from the other, until we get to the middle. And you know what, sweetheart? We’ll stop the draft in the door with the rest!” Mrs. Kráner burst out laughing. “You’re always pulling my leg! When’s that hole in your head going to heal up? Very good . . . the door . . . stop the draft . . . !” But Halics was determined. “But Rosie dear, it was you who said there was a draft! I’m not pulling your leg. Go on, take a bite!” And so saying he pressed one end of the croissant into her mouth and immediately clamped his teeth round the other end. As soon as he did so the croissant broke in two and fell into their laps, but they—their mouths just opposite each other!—stayed there unmoving, and then, when Halics started feeling dizzy, he summed up courage and kissed the woman on the mouth. Mrs. Kráner blinked in confusion and pushed the passionate Halics away from her. “Now now, Lajos! That’s not allowed! Don’t act like a fool! What are you thinking!? Anyone might be watching!” She adjusted her skirt. It was only once the window and the glazed part of the door were bright with morning that the dance was over. 🔗

• [N] Awesome scene, dancing all night at the bar

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They were all fast asleep. Mrs. Kráner and Halics carried on whispering for a while but had not strength enough to get up and bring a bottle of wine over from the counter, and so, in the general air of peaceful snoring, they too were eventually overcome by the desire to sleep. Only Kerekes remained awake. He waited until the whispering had stopped then got up, stretched his limbs, and silently and carefully set off to skirt the tables. He felt around for bottles that still had something left in them, then removed them and set them out in a row on “the billiards table”; he examined the glasses too and whenever he found a drop of wine in one he quickly downed it. His enormous shadow followed him like a ghost across the wall, sometimes drifting onto the ceiling, then, once its master took his uncertain place again, it too rested, in the corner at the back. He swept the cobwebs off the scars and fresh scratches of his frightening face, and then—as best he could—he poured the remnant wine into a single glass and, puffing, set greedily to drinking. And so he drank on without a break until the very last drop vanished in his great gut. He leaned back in his chair, opened his mouth and tried belching a few times, then, not succeeding, he put his hand on his stomach and rambled his way into the corner where he stuck a finger down his throat and started vomiting. Having finished he straightened up and wiped his mouth with his hand. “So that’s done with,” he grumbled, and retired behind “the billiards table” again. He picked up the accordion and struck up a sentimental, melancholy tune. He swayed his enormous body back and forth in time to the gentle lilting of the music and when he got to the middle of it a tear appeared in the corner of his numb eyelid. If anyone had appeared then and asked him what suddenly bothered him he wouldn’t have been able to say. He was alone with the puffing sound of the instrument and he didn’t mind being overcome, quite swept away by the slow military air. There was no reason to stop playing it and when he got to the end he started it again, without a break, like a child among sleeping adults, full of a happy sense of satisfaction since, apart from him, no one else was in any position to listen. The velvety sound of the accordion stimulated the spiders of the bar to a new frenzy of activity. Every glass, every bottle, every cup and every ashtray was quickly veiled over with a light tissue of webs. The table and chair legs were woven into a cocoon and then—with the aid of one or other secret narrow strand—they were all connected up, as if it were a matter of some importance that they, flattened in their secret, remote corners, should be properly advised of every slight tremor, each microscopic shift, and would be so as long as this strange, all-but-invisible network remained intact. They wove over the faces, hands, and feet of the sleepers too then, lightning-quick, retreated to their hidey-holes so that given one barely perceptible vibration, they should be ready to start again. The horseflies who were seeking safety from the spiders in movement and night tirelessly described their figures of eight around the faintly flickering lamp. Kerekes played on, half-asleep, his semiconscious brain full of bombs and crashing planes, of soldiers fleeing the field, and of burning towns, one image rapidly succeeding the other with dizzying speed: and when they entered, it was so silent, and they so unnoticed, that they stopped in astonishment, surveying the scene before them, so Kerekes only sensed, rather than knew, that Irimiás and Petrina had arrived. 🔗

• [N] End of part 1, beautiful, cobwebs cocoon the bar, everyone fast asleep except Kerekes who plays the accordion and sheds a tear, Irimias and Petrina enter.

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The Second Part 🔗

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What has fate done to you, my unfortunate friends? I could be referring to our friend Futaki here, with his endless, depressing talk of flaking plaster, stripped roofs, crumbling walls and corroded bricks, the sour taste of defeat haunting everything he says. Why waste time on small material details? Why not talk, instead, of the failure of imagination, of the narrowing of perspective, of the ragged clothes you stand in? Should we not be discussing your utter inability to do anything at all? Please don’t be surprised if I use harsher terms than usual, but I am inclined to speak my mind now, to be honest with you. Because, believe me, pussy-footing and treading carefully around your sensitivities will only make things worse! And if you really think, as the headmaster told me yesterday, dropping his voice, that “the estate is cursed” then why don’t you gather your courage in both hands and do something about it?! This low, cowardly, shallow way of thinking can have serious consequences, friends, if you don’t mind me saying so! Your helplessness is culpable, your cowardice culpable, culpable, ladies and gentlemen! Because—and mark this well!—it is not only other people one can ruin, but oneself! . . . And that is a graver fault, my friends, and indeed, if you think about it carefully, you will see that every sin we commit against ourselves is an act of self-humiliation. 🔗

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Their sleepless, troubled eyes were veiled over with tears and, hearing these words, an uncertain, wary, yet unstoppable wave of relief washed over their faces, while, here and there, a brief, almost impersonal sigh escaped from them. It was like fierce sunlight curing a cold. After all, this was precisely what they’d been waiting for all these hours—these liberating words pointing to the lasting prospect of “a better, fairer future” and their disappointed looks now radiated hope and trust, belief and enthusiasm, decision and the sense of an ever more steely will as they faced Irimiás . . . 🔗

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V
THE PERSPECTIVE,
AS SEEN FROM THE FRONT 🔗

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he understood why he had, time and time again, put off the idea of making the decision to leave: he had rid himself of the one single security in his life and now he had nothing left; and, as before he hadn’t had the guts to stay, so now he lacked the guts to leave, because having packed up for good, it was as if he had denied himself even greater possibilities, and had simply exchanged one trap for another. 🔗

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And then this whole thing . . . that business yesterday . . . “However I try, I still don’t understand it . . . Because he’d be confident that we knew him well enough. So why all the clowning? Talking like an evangelist preacher . . . You could see he was suffering as much as we were . . . I don’t understand. He would have known what we wanted! And he’d have known the only reason we went along with all that nonsense about the idiot child was because we wanted him to say, ‘OK, enough of all this! Here I am, boys and girls. What’s all this moaning and groaning about? Let’s pick ourselves up and do something clever for once. Any good ideas out there? . . .’ But no. It was all ‘ladies and gentlemen’ this and ‘ladies and gentlemen’ that, and you are all miserable sinners . . . I mean, it’s beyond belief! And who knows whether he’s doing this in earnest or just messing around? There was no way of telling him to stop either . . . And all that stuff about the retard . . . So she ate a lot of rat poison, so what? It was probably the best thing for the sad creature, at least she’s spared more suffering. But what’s all that to do with me!? There’s her mother: it was her job to care for her! And then . . . all that frantic searching through bog and brake, the whole day in awful weather, combing every inch of the place till we find the miserable little thing! . . . It should have been that old witch, her mother, doing the searching. But that’s how it is. Who can understand Irimiás? No one! It’s just that . . . he wouldn’t have done this back then . . . I mean I didn’t know where to look, I was so surprised . . . He has certainly changed a lot, that’s for sure. Of course we don’t know what he’s been through in the last few years. But his hooknose, his checkered jacket and his red tie—that’s exactly the same! Everything’s OK.” 🔗

• [N] Futaki

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“Ah, for God’s sake get some sleep!” Halics grunted. “I can’t sleep with you lot going on!” There was quiet for a few minutes but it didn’t last because one of them accidentally let off a fart. “Who was that?” Kráner laughed and dug his neighbor Schmidt in the ribs. “Leave me alone,” the other fumed as he turned over: “It wasn’t me!” But Kráner wouldn’t let it go. “Come on now, will no one own up to it!?” Halics was practically gasping with nerves, as he sat up. “Look, it was me,” he pleaded: “I confess it all. Now will you please shut up . . .” After this it finally did fall quiet and a few minutes later they were all fast asleep. 🔗

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The headmaster, deeply embarrassed, was trying with some difficulty, to persuade a little man in a patched suit to accompany him to a little frequented place. The man seemed incapable of saying no and the headmaster could barely contain himself, and as soon as they reached the deserted park he even gave the man a push so that they might reach a stone bench that was densely overgrown with bushes where he laid the little man down and threw himself on him, kissing his neck, but at that moment some white-gowned doctors appeared on the path that was strewn with white shingle and he waved ashamedly to them to indicate that he too was just passing by though he went on to explain to the doctors that they really had nowhere else to go so really they should understand and that they should certainly take this into account and he began to abuse the embarrassed little man because by now he felt nothing but a deep disgust for him but whichever way he looked it made no difference the doctors stared at him with contempt then made a tired gesture as though there was nothing he could do about it Mrs. Halics was washing Mrs. Schmidt’s back the rosary beads hung on the edge of the bath slid into the water a young scoundrel’s face appeared glaring at the window Mrs. Schmidt said she’d had enough her skin was beginning to burn with all the scrubbing but Mrs. Halics pushed her back in the bath and carried on scrubbing because she was ever more fearful that Mrs. Schmidt was annoyed with her then she cried out angrily I hope the viper bites you and sat down at the edge of the bath and the young scoundrel was still glaring at the window Mrs. Schmidt was a bird happily flying through the milk of theclouds seeing someonedownthere wavingather soshedes cendeda littleand could hear Mrs.Schmidtbawling whyisntshecooking youscoundrelcomedownim mediatelybutshe flewoverher andshechir ruppedyou won’tdieofhun gerbeforetommorrow shefeltthe warmsunonher backsudden lySchmidtwas therebesideherStopit immediatelybutshe paid noattention anddescendedfurther shedhavelikedtocatchaninsect theywerebeatingFutakisback withanironrod Hecouldntmove hehadbeenboundwithropestoatree tenselyshefelthow theropewasstraining alongopenwoundacrosshisback shelookedawayshesouldntbearit shewassittingonanexcavator thatwasdigginganenormousditch amancameover andsaidhurry becauseyourenotgetting anymorefuel howevermuchyoubegmeforit shedugtheditcheverdeeper itkeptcollapsing she tri tr triedagain butinvainandshecried asshewassittingattheengineroomwindow andhadnoideawhatwashappening itwasdawnandgettinglighter oreveningandgrowingdarker andshedidntwantitall evertocometoanend shejustsatandhadnoideawhatwashappening nothingchangedoutside itwasneithermorningnoreveningitjust carriedondawnortwilightwhichever . . . 🔗

• [N] Great dream sequence as the towns people sleep in the dilapidated manor

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IV
HEAVENLY VISION?
HALLUCINATION? 🔗

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From time to time the wind lifted the ends of the veil, the rain quietly washing the corpse, and the three ancient oaks creaked and groaned as if about to fall . . . But there was not a soul anywhere near the body, just that sweet, bell-like laughter everywhere, a kind of carefree, cheerful music. The “kid” stared at the clearing, mesmerized, not knowing what he should most fear, the sight of his sister, dripping, stiff, clad in white as pure as snow, or the thought of her suddenly getting up and walking toward him; his legs trembled, everything went dark, the trees, the manor, the park, the sky, leaving only her, glowing painfully bright, ever more distinct, in the middle of the clearing. And in that sudden silence, in the total lack of any sound, when even the raindrops broke silently as they fell, and they could well have thought they’d gone deaf, since they could feel the wind but couldn’t hear it humming, and were impervious to the strange breeze lightly playing about them, he nevertheless thought he heard that continuous hum and tinkling laughter suddenly give way to frightening yelps and grunts, and as he looked up he saw them moving toward him. He covered his face with his arms and started sobbing. “You see that?” Irimiás whispered, frozen, squeezing Petrina’s arm so hard his knuckles turned white. A wind had sprung up around the body and in complete silence the blindingly white corpse began uncertainly to rise . . . then, having reached the top of the oaks, it suddenly rocked and, bobbling slightly, started its descent to the ground again, to the precise spot it had occupied before. At that moment the disembodied voices set to a fury of complaint like a dissatisfied chorus that had had to resign itself to failure once again. Petrina was gasping. “Can you believe that?” “I am trying to believe it,” replied Irimiás, now deathly pale. “I wonder how long they have been trying? The child has been dead almost two days now. Petrina, perhaps for the first time in my life I am really frightened.” “My friend . . . can I ask you something?” “Go ahead.” “What do you think . . . ?” “Think?” “Do you think . . . um . . . that Hell exists?” Irimiás gave a great gulp. “Who knows. It might.” Suddenly all was quiet again. There was only the humming, a little louder perhaps. The corpse started to rise again, and then some six feet above the clearing it trembled, then with incredible speed it rose and flew off, soon to be lost among the still, solemn clouds. Wind swept the park, the oaks shook as did the ruined old summerhouse, then the tinkling-chiming voices reached a triumphant crescendo above their heads before slowly fading away, leaving nothing behind except a few scraps of veil drifting down, the sound of rattling tiles on the fallen-in roof of the manor, and the frightening knockings of the broken tin gutters against the wall. For minutes on end they stood frozen staring at the clearing, then because nothing else happened they slowly came to their senses. “I think it’s over,” whispered Irimiás, then gave a deep hiccup. “I really hope so,” whispered Petrina. 🔗

• [N] The young girl, dead, is lifted by spirits into heaven??

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“It doesn’t matter what we saw just now, it still means nothing. Heaven? Hell? The afterlife? All nonsense. Just a waste of time. The imagination never stops working but we’re not one jot nearer the truth.” 🔗

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“God is not made manifest in language, you dope. He’s not manifest in anything. He doesn’t exist.” “Well, I believe in God!” Petrina cut in outraged. “Have some consideration for me at least, you damn atheist!” “God was a mistake. I’ve long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and voice shouting above it. There’s no sense or meaning in anything. It’s nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressure. It’s only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of decay. There’s no escaping that, stupid.” “But how can you say this now, after what we’ve just seen?” Petrina protested. Irimiás made a wry face. “That’s precisely why I say we are trapped forever. We’re properly doomed. It’s best not to try either, best not believe your eyes. It’s a trap, Petrina. And we fall into it every time. We think we’re breaking free but all we’re doing is readjusting the locks. We’re trapped, end of story.” Petrina had worked his own way up to fury now. “I don’t understand a word of that! Don’t spout poetry at me, goddamit! Speak plain!” “Let’s hang ourselves, you fool,” Irimiás sadly advised him: “At least it’s over quicker. It’s the same either way, whether we hang ourselves or not. So OK, let’s not hang ourselves.” 🔗

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“So tell me what’s new? What news over there?” asked Tóth, his eyes wide with anticipation. “Where?” Petrina wondered. “Just, you know, ‘there’ . . . speaking generally.” “Ah. We have just witnessed a resurrection.” The bald man flashed his yellow teeth. “You haven’t changed a bit, Petrina! Ha-ha-ha! We’ve just witnessed a resurrection! Very good! That’s you, all right!” “You don’t believe me?” Petrina sourly remarked. “You’ll see, you’ll come to a bad end. Don’t wear anything too warm once you’re at death’s door. It’s hot enough there, they say.” Tóth was shaking with laughter. “Wonderful, gentlemen!” he panted. “I’ll rejoin my associates. Will we meet again?” “That,” said Petrina with a sad smile, “is unavoidable.” 🔗

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“Good evening,” boomed Irimiás. Steigerwald quickly turned round. “Good Lord! It’s you!.” 🔗

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III
THE PERSPECTIVE,
AS SEEN FROM THE BACK 🔗

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Because it was all in vain: the memory of the few magical hours spent with “him” was not enough to allay her fear—especially now that it was plain that Irimiás had simply reneged on his promise—that all was lost now . . . It wasn’t easy, but what else could she do: she tried to resign herself to the fact that Irimiás (“. . . until this matter is finally closed . . .”) would not be taking her away, and that her dream of disentangling herself from Schmidt’s “filthy paws” and taking her leave of this “stinking hole of a place” would have to be postponed for months, perhaps years (“Good heavens, years! More years!”) but the terrible thought that even that might be a lie, that he was now over the fields and far away in search of new conquests, made her clench her fists. True, if she thought back to the previous night when she gave herself to Irimiás at the back of the storeroom, she had to admit that even now, at this most dreadful hour, it was no disappointment: those magnificent moments, those moments of extraordinary blissful satisfaction had to compensate for everything else; it was only the “betrayed love” and the crushing and besmirching of her “pure burning passion” that could never be forgiven! For after all, what could one expect when, despite the words whispered in secret at the moment of parting (“Before dawn, for certain! . . .”) it finally became clear that everything was “a filthy lie”! . . . Without hope but still stubbornly longing, she gazed at the rain through the enormous gap where the main entrance had been, and her heart contracted, her entire body doubled up, and her tangled hair fell forward to cover her tortured face. But however she tried to concentrate on the thirst for revenge rather than on the agonizing sadness of resignation, it was the tender murmuring of Irimiás she kept hearing; it was his tall, broad, respect-demanding, solid body she kept seeing; the strong self-confident curve of his nose, the narrowing of his soft lips, the irresistible glow of his eyes, and time and again she felt his delicate fingers half-consciously playing with her hair, the warmth of his palms against her breasts and thighs, and every time she heard the slightest noise she imagined it might be him, so—when the others had returned and she saw the same bitter funereal expression on their faces as she felt on her own—the last weak barriers of her proud resistance were swept away by despair. “What will happen to me without him?! . . . For the love of God, . . . leave me if you must, but . . . but not now! Not yet! . . . Not just at this time! . . . An hour more! . . . A minute! . . . What do I care what he does to them, but . . . Me! Not to me! . . . If nothing else make him allow me to be his lover! His handmaid! . . . His servant! What do I care! Let him kick me, beat me like a dog, just . . . this one time, let him come back just this one time! . . .” 🔗

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“All right, let’s get down to business!” he drew deeply on the tiny remnant of his cigarette then threw it down and stamped on it. “I have some important news.” It was as if they were just now emerging from some evil spell. They were sober at a stroke but they simply couldn’t understand what had happened to them in the last few hours: What demonic power had taken possession of them, stifling every sane and rational impulse? What was it that had driven them to lose their heads and attack each other “like filthy pigs when the swill is late”? What made it possible for people like them—people who had finally managed to emerge from years of apparently terminal hopelessness to breathe the dizzying air of freedom—to rush around in senseless despair, like prisoners in a cage so that even their vision had clouded over? What explanation could there be for them to “have eyes” only for the ruinous, stinking, desolate aspect of their future home, and completely lose track of the promise that “what had fallen should rise again”! It was like waking from a nightmare. 🔗

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badinage 🔗

• [N] badinage (noun): playful or lighthearted banter; teasing conversation 🎭😂

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God knows where, heading into the unknown, and should they come to a fork in that road, he couldn’t begin to decide which road to take because he was helpless, resigned to the fact that his fate was being decided elsewhere, by a noisy, rattling, ancient wreck of a truck over which he had absolutely no control. “It seems there’s no escape,” he reflected in apathy. “This way or that, I’m lost either way. Tomorrow I’ll wake in an unfamiliar room where I won’t know what’s waiting for me, and it will be as if I had set out on my own . . . I’ll put my minimal possessions out on the table by the bed, if there is one, and there I am, staring out of the window at dusk watching the light fade all over again . . .” It shocked him to realize that his faith in Irimiás had been shaken the moment he saw him at the “manor” entrance . . . “Maybe, if he hadn’t come back, there might still have been some hope . . . But now?” Right back at the manor he had sensed the well-concealed disappointment behind the words, and saw, even as Irimiás was standing by the truck watching them loading up, how he was hanging his head, and that something was lost, lost forever! . . . Now suddenly everything was clear. Irimiás lacked the strength and energy he once had; he had finally lost “his old fire”; he too was just filling in time, driven along by habit; and, realizing this, Futaki now understood that the speech at the bar with its clumsy rhetorical tricks was simply a way of concealing from those who still believed in Irimiás the truth that he was as helpless as they were, that he no longer hoped to lend meaning to the power that was strangling him as much as it was them, that even he, Irimiás, could not free himself from it. 🔗

• [N] Futaki questioning his fate

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II
NOTHING BUT WORK AND WORRIES 🔗

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demimonde 🔗

• [N] demimonde (noun): a social class of people who live on the fringes of respectable society, often associated with a lifestyle of vice or hedonism; a world of courtesans and women of questionable morals. 🎭💃

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I
THE CIRCLE CLOSES 🔗

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He woke at noon, drenched in sweat and angry, as he always was after a long sleep, cursing, turning his head this way and that, furious at the wasted time. He quickly put on his glasses, reread the last sentence in his journal then leaned back in the chair and looked through the chink in the curtain at the fields beyond. 🔗

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He raised his head and stared at the ceiling, gasping for breath, then gripped his pencil . . . “Now he is standing up,” he wrote in a deepening reverie, pressing the pencil lightly in case he tore the paper. “He scratches his groin and stretches. He walks round the room and sits down again. He goes out for a piss and returns. Sits down. Stands up.” He scribbled feverishly and was practically seeing everything that was happening over there, and he knew, was deadly certain, that from then on this was how it would be. He realized that all those years of arduous, painstaking work had finally borne fruit: he had finally become the master of a singular art that enabled him not only to describe a world whose eternal unremitting progress in one direction required such mastery but also—to a certain extent—he could even intervene in the mechanism behind an apparently chaotic swirl of events! . . . 🔗

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lineaments 🔗

• [N] lineaments (noun): distinguishing features or characteristics; outlines or contours ✨🔍

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He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity . . . and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body from it, only, eventually, to deliver himself—utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials—into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying a order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of some day finding his way back home. He turned his head toward the east, once the home of a thriving industry, now nothing but a set of dilapidated and deserted buildings, watching while the first rays of a swollen red sun broke through the topmost beams of a derelict farmhouse from which the roof tiles had been stripped. ‘I really should come to a decision. I can’t stay here any longer.’ He drew the warm duvet over him again and rested his head on his arm, but could not close his eyes; at first it had been the ghostly bells that had frightened him but now it was the threatening silence that followed: anything might happen now, he felt. But he did not move a muscle, not until the objects around him, that had so far been merely listening, started up a nervous conversation (the sideboard gave a creak, a saucepan rattled, a china plate slid back into the rack) at which point . . .” 🔗