He asked me if I recognized him.
I was watching a red spot on his forehead and saw that although he had wiped his eyes, one of them still had tears in it, and I said no, I didn't recognize him; I didn't want to, and somehow there was something totally unfamiliar about him, though the real reason I said no was that I still wanted to hold on to the lie with which my parents for years had eliminated him from my life; I hoped that insisting on this lie would keep him away from Mother.
But my adored mother did not or, rather, would not understand my insistence, and she lied again, she felt she had to, and with her lie she pushed me away, crushed me; she pretended to be quite surprised that I didn't recognize this man; she was doing this for his benefit, with this pretended surprise trying to suggest that it was only my forgetfulness, and not them, she and Father, to blame for erasing this man from my memory; the excitement of her own lie dried and choked her voice; it was repulsive to listen to it then; today, however, having recovered from the shame of my powerlessness and from the deep wounds of childhood injuries, I rather admire her self-discipline; after all, I did come in at the most dramatic moment of their reunion; what else could she have done but seek refuge in a familiar role; she felt she ought to play the mother now, a mother speaking to her son; she very quickly wanted to change back into being a mother, her face underwent a complete alteration as a result of this mental exercise: a strikingly beautiful, red-haired woman was sitting in that bed, her cheeks flushed, her slightly trembling, nervous fingers playing with the cord on her bedjacket — she seemed to be choking herself with them; this woman seemed a stranger, her voice phony, as she refused to believe I'd so quickly forgotten this man, the man I hated, but her lovely green eyes, narrowing and fluttering, betrayed how completely defenseless she was in this painful and embarrassing situation.
And this, in fact, made me happy; I'd have loved to come right out and say she was lying, shout to the whole world that she was lying, deceiving everyone, but I couldn't say anything, because I was stifled by the constant booming in my ears, and tears that wanted to spill from my eyes were trickling down my throat.
But the stranger, who sensed nothing of what was happening between me and Mother, burst into a loud resounding laugh and, as if coming to my aid and neutralizing the tone of resentment in Mother's voice, said, "It's been five years, after all," which made it clear to me how long had passed since his disappearance, and now I was touched and consoled by his voice and by his laughter, he seemed to be laughing off those five years, making light of it all; as he began walking toward me, he indeed became familiar; I recognized his easy, confident stride, his laugh, the candor of his blue eyes, and, most of all perhaps, the trust I could not help having in him; my defensive and self-protective attitude was gone.
He embraced me and I had to surrender; he was still laughing and saying that it was five years, not exactly a short time; his laughter was meant more for my mother, who kept on lying, saying they had told me he was abroad, which of course wasn't at all what they had really told me: only once did I ever ask them where János was, and it was she, not Father, who said that János Hamar had committed the greatest possible crime and therefore we must never talk about him ever again.
She didn't have to tell me, I knew, that the greatest crime was treason, and therefore he was no more, didn't exist, never had, and if by any chance he was still alive, for us he was as good as dead.
My face touched his chest: his body was hard, bony, thin, and because I automatically closed my eyes, submerging myself in that loud booming, withdrawing into the only refuge my body could provide, I was able to feel a great many things in his body: his tenderness radiating warmly into my body, the excitement of his joy still unable to break free, his lightness, and also a wound-up, convulsive strength that seemed to cling to his sinews, bones, and thin flesh; still, I did not yield completely to his embrace, I could not tear myself away from my mother's lies, and the way I trusted his body seemed much too familiar, harked back to a buried past, spoke to me of the absence of my father's body and, somewhat more remotely, of the pains I'd suffered for loving Krisztián; his body spoke to me of the perfect security provided by a male body and the repeated withdrawal of that security; reopened the past of five years earlier when I could still touch anything with absolute confidence; precisely this excessive openness of feelings made me undemonstrative in his arms.
I could not deny and absorb time any faster; I couldn't have known that the time of fate cannot be stopped; they began talking above my head.
Why should they lie, he was saying, he'd been in prison.
At the same time Mother mumbled something about not being able to explain to me exactly what that meant.
Then he repeated, more lightly and playfully, that yes, he'd been in jail, that's where he'd come from just now, straight from the slammer, and although he was talking to me, he meant the mischievous undertone for Mother, who, finding some possibility for evasion in this playful tone, assured me that János hadn't stolen or robbed or anything like that.
But he wouldn't let her have her little detour and retorted that he'd tell me about it, why not?
But then Mother's voice, deep and filled with hatred, pounced on him, challenged him to tell me if he felt he must, which meant of course that she was forbidding him to say anything; she was trying to protect me and to invalidate him.
It felt good that she hadn't thrust me away from herself, after all, that her protective voice was lashing about behind my back, even if this odd sort of protection quickly pushed me from the threshold of knowledge back to the dark realm of suppressed information; the stranger made no reply, their argument remained suspended above my head, and though I felt I must know, had the right to know, his eyes told me hesitantly that perhaps now was not the time; gripping my shoulders firmly, he pushed me away from himself so he could see me, take a good look at me, and as I followed his glance sweeping over my face and body, I felt time opening up in my body, because the sight before him, me, with all the changes and growing, made him happy and infinitely satisfied; his eyes seemed to devour the physical changes my body had undergone in five years, with great delight making them his own; he shook me, slapped me on the back, and for a brief moment I, too, could see myself with his eyes, and I was hurting terribly, everywhere, in every part of my body that he now looked at, his glance hurt me, because I felt as if my body were deception itself; he was enjoying it so much yet I was standing before him unclean, and that hurt me, hurt me so terribly that the tears stuck in my throat broke out in a quiet, pitiful whimper; he may not have noticed it, because he planted a loud smacking kiss on each of my cheeks, almost biting me, and then, as if unable to get enough of my sight and touch, kissed me a third time; that's when Mother behind us told us to turn away because she was getting out of bed; by then I was sobbing, making gurgling and rattling sounds, and after the third kiss I clumsily, the clumsiness caused by my emotions, touched his face with my mouth, that musty smell on his face, I was touching this erupting pain of mine to his face; but he didn't care, roughly he yanked me to himself and kept me pressed to his body, and of course he cared, he cared for me because he wanted to drink up my sobbing with his own body.